Forwards
by Roadstergal
Summary: A followup of the book Backwards, by Rob Grant. Slash.
1. Chapter 1

Lister did not think that the landing was all that bad, considering that he had never flown anything remotely like the Wildfire before. Cat disagreed. "Ow, god, bud, you have crushed my nads beyond repair! And you creased my best jacket! What am I supposed to do now?"

"Loot the old Cat's clothes," Lister snapped. He fiddled with the hatch, and finally managed to open it, spilling Cat out into Red Dwarf's landing bay. The feline twisted, landing on his feet with agility. Lister stumbled out after him, falling on his hands and knees. A set of jelly-rubber fingers fastened around his arm and helped him to his feet. Kryten was beaming at him. "So good to have you back... er... I mean, good to have you here, Mister Lister!" Lister could not help but smile at Kryten's enthusiasm.

"Does JMC recruit at the fetal stage in your dimension?" an arrogant, nasal voice cut in. Lister turned to where Rimmer stood, arms crossed, frowning at him. Lister once again encountered the very significant problem with being fifteen, physically - moodiness. Rimmer evoked a very sour mood indeed. Lister's one-hundred-fifty-plus-year-old intellect frequently chafed at its control by his fifteen-year-old hormones, but that had the net effect of making him yet moodier.

"Look," he snapped, and was plunged into an even worse mood by the fact that his voice cracked when he started the final 'k' sound. "I was _abandoned_ by you for half a lifetime, died, was brought back in a backwards universe, and then, because you're such a farking smeghead, overshot the time I was supposed to spend in it, and ended up fifteen smegging years old, so just leave me the hell alone!" He didn't care that, even if you applied it to the old Rimmer, it wasn't exactly true. It sounded good, it sounded like a legitimate gripe that he had every right to be teed off over. He stalked out of the landing bay, heading for the officers' quarters. Rimmer sneered at him as he walked by, while Kryten looked on in confusion. Cat snickered. Yeah, Cat was his mate.

Two cabins down from the quarters that corresponded to the ones they had appropriated on the old Red Dwarf, Lister found evidence of habitation. Zero-gee football posters on the upper bunk. A large inflatable cucumber tucked in a corner. Marilyn Monroe smiling sensually at him from the back of the locker.

The clothes and music inside of that locker were much neater than he would ever keep them, but he assumed that Kryten had been keeping things since he... died. He did not recognize the clothes, but they were recognizable as _his_ fashion sense. The music was definitely his; he pulled out a few discs, eager for a little 23rd century reggae. Listening to 20th century music played backwards for half a lifetime was not satisfying, not at all. He creased his forehead at the sight of some books stacked neatly in the bottom of his alternate's locker. _Books_? He pulled two paperbacks out and looked at them, curiously. Maybe he had used them as lager stands.

"Lister!" Rimmer bellowed, running into the room. "What the smeg are you doing?"

"Goin' through my things."

Rimmer's face was almost purple. "Those are not your things!"

Lister shrugged. "Close enough." He tossed the books carelessly over his shoulder, and hopped up on the upper bunk, stretching out luxuriously. He had not had a good rest in... ages. But what Rimmer had said before they landed nagged at him. "We picked a rare old time to show up, eh?"

"Yes," Rimmer snapped. "We found an S3 planet. We're going to head down to investigate. Might be a good place to live. Are you coming with, or do you have some zits to pop?"

Lister flopped over, looking at Rimmer, who stood with his arms folded, jiggling one leg in agitation. "After I take a nap."

"Now," Rimmer grated.

"What're you going to do, drag me out of bed?" Lister asked, and tossed onto the end, "Deadie?" He very pointedly slapped the light switch, and fell into a very satisfying and dreamless sleep.

xxxxxx

"It's a perfectly good planet. With the exception of the orange flora, it's almost exactly like Earth."

Lister sighed, leaning back in the chair and propping his feet up on the console. Why was this so hard for Rimmer to understand? "I don't want to settle down on that smegging planet. It's not Earth. I want to keep traveling."

"What is this, some kind of adolescent joyride?"

"Sol's probably gone nova by now," Holly interjected. In this dimension, Holly was a female, but every bit as laconic and senile as the old Holly had been.

"We'll keep traveling," Lister said with finality. "I'd rather stay on this ship than settle for some smegging orange rock."

"Bad taste, bud," Cat agreed. "Red, black, even a nice mauve. Not orange. Ugh."

Rimmer spread his hands. "Fine. How is this going to be decided? By a democratic vote including a brainless feline and an adolescent bum, or by the well-reasoned opinion of the senior technician on this ship?"

"If you're going to pull rank, Rimmer," Lister said, dropping his feet back onto the floor, "dead crew don't rank. So _I'm_ the senior technician on this ship, and I say keep going."

Rimmer turned to Holly, a stormcloud brewing on his face.

"Technically, he's right, Arn," Holly said.

Rimmer stomped out of the room, fuming. Lister and Cat high-fived.

xxxxxx

The relationship between Lister and Rimmer had always been contentious, but this dimension, Lister thought, took it too far. They sniped nonstop. They each seethed when not sniping and very pointedly resented each others' presence, but Rimmer did not move to another set of quarters, perhaps out of resistance to the idea of being displaced, while Lister felt that the quarters had been bequeathed to him by his dead alternate, and also refused to give them up. And so they shared and seethed. Lister told himself it was because this dimension's Rimmer was worse than the old one - snarkier, more pompous, skinnier and more jittery, less capable and more bitter. But in those rare times when Lister calmed down, and his hundred-fifty-plus-year-old intellect took charge, he had to admit that the problem was that this Rimmer was too much like the old one.

Rimmer was not Ace. God, Ace had been wonderful; magnificent, charming, kind, capable. He had given up his laudable life for Lister. Rimmer paled in comparison, a pitiful maggot next to a brilliant butterfly. There lay another point of contention. Admittedly, Lister had understood little of what Ace told him of dimension jumping. But one thing had come back to Lister, just before he jumped out of their old universe. Dimensions had friction. You would be burnt to a crisp if you tried to jump into a dimension that was too close to your own. They had not burnt to a crisp, so this dimension must be significantly different from the one they had come from. Yet here it was - Red Dwarf, tidy Kryten, smeghead Rimmer. Was the death of him and the Cat really enough of a difference to make the trip so uneventful? It would have enough, Lister groused, for Rimmer to have been different. More like Ace. Why hadn't they jumped into a dimension like that? Lister was often tempted to hop right back on the Wildfire and hop around until he found a better dimension. One where the human race wasn't extinct, where Kochanski loved him, where he was rich and famous... or one where Rimmer was more like Ace. But Kryten, Holly, and Rimmer had all agreed that the Wildfire was not for teenagers, and had locked it securely away in one of the storage bays. Lister hadn't even been able to get to it with a plasma cutter. Bastards.

Lister was asleep, late one night, when the door to the quarters slid open. The light outside was dim, and inside was pitch-black, so Lister had only the vaguest sense of a tall figure in a silvery flightsuit. "Ace," he gasped, quietly. The man walked over, passing farther out of the dim hall lighting, so Lister had to reach out to feel exactly where he stood. The flightsuit was smooth and cool, and crinkled slightly under his hand. The figure leaned down, and somehow it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Lister to open his mouth and kiss the other man deeply, sliding his hands around the back of Ace's shoulders as he stood beside Lister's bunk. He unbuttoned the crotch of Lister's long johns with one long-fingered, slender hand, slipping said hand inside to grasp the erection Lister had abruptly sprung, as per his fifteen-year-old libido. Ace stroked it firmly as he kissed Lister, and Lister bucked into his hand, reaching his own hand around the back of Ace's head - where it encountered tight curls, not soft waves. Lister frantically ran his hand over Ace's cheek and down his throat, feeling a face that was far too slender and a throat that sported far too prominent an Adam's apple. "Stroke me a kipper, Skipper," Ace said, in a voice that was too high-pitched, too nasal, but Lister was coming already, a magnificent orgasm clashing in his mind with the knowledge that _Rimmer_, not Ace, was stroking him...

He woke, tossing about in sticky sheets. He paused for a moment, taking deep breaths, then cautiously leaned over to look at the bunk below. The quiet whiffle of Rimmer's sleep-breath reassured him that he had not woken the hologram. But the bastard was now invading Lister's wet dreams, for smeg's sake. He could not fall back asleep.

There was no reason other than inertia and stubborn pride for him to still share this bloody room with Rimmer. It was bad enough that they sniped and insulted even more than Lister had with the alternate Rimmer in his own universe. This Rimmer was maddening, and very good at making Lister lose his temper and make an ass of himself, betrayed by his teenage hormones. But that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was when Lister looked up from what he was doing, or looked around abruptly, and caught a certain look on Rimmer's face. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was not the expressions he was used to seeing on Rimmer - smugness, anger, irritation, condescension, ingratiation. No, it was almost - a waiting, a searching. It creeped Lister the hell out, and he accused Rimmer of leering in the rare (but not rare enough) times he caught Rimmer at it. Rimmer would merely twist his lips and make some snarky comment as to what he could possibly find alluring about _Lister_?

They were on Starbug, returning from a rest break on a planet with amenable gravity and atmosphere, when Lister reached a breaking point. Lister did not want to settle on a planet, but he freely admitted that it was rather good to run around barefoot on grass or wheat or whatever the smeg the soft pale-yellow stuff on the planet was. Rimmer, of course, foretold dire outcomes from running around barefoot; Lister would get stung by some insect carrying a virulent disease that would turn his innards to liquid and make the last man alive just one more of the many not-alive at all, or he would step in a hole and break his leg, or...

"Stuff it, Rimmer," Lister said, and ran to play with the Cat for a few hours.

The three of them boarded Starbug several hours later - Kryten had remained on Red Dwarf to 'look after things' - and Lister and Cat took their accustomed positions at the front, while Rimmer sat behind Lister. Lister had little enough to do; Cat was a far better pilot, and needed no help to take Starbug back to the Dwarf. And so Lister spun around, annoyed at his uselessness, and he caught that Look on Rimmer's face again.

"What the smeg do you want?" he yelled, leaping to his feet.

Rimmer had wiped The Look off of his face the moment Lister had turned, and now bore an expression of patient condescension. "I want you to sit down and shut up so that our mangy pilot can pay all due attention to not smashing us into the side of Red Dwarf."

"You know what I mean!" Lister yelled. There was no point - he was close enough that Rimmer could have heard him if he had whispered - but he was immensely frustrated, and it felt good to yell. "Why do you look at me like that?" Cat whipped his head back and forth between the scene and their heading, trying to catch the good bits without crashing the lander. Lister pushed Cat to the back of his mind. He bent closer, wanting - so badly - to wipe that look off of Rimmer's face for good. That look of _waiting_ for something. "If you're looking for me to turn into that other Lister, I'm not gonna," he hissed. "I don't smegging care about you, and I never will. _You_ died in my dimension. AR got a virus, and you melted, like one of your smegging toy soldiers on a fire. I watched you die, and I didn't care. Not one bit. I didn't care about you, and I don't care about you. No matter how often you die and come back." He watched that face, seeing in it the features that had tried to scream as plumes of smoke blew out of its mouth. He tried not to bite his lip.

Rimmer stared back, calmly. But Lister saw his index fingers move; they were twitching slightly, and Rimmer could not stop them. "Glad yeh understand me," Lister said, and sat back in his chair with a plop. The rest of the journey was completed in silence, and Lister tore out of the 'Bug once it had settled. He ran to the room he shared with Rimmer, and looked around. So much like the quarters they used to share. Just smegging like them. He pulled open the locker and hauled out the small pile of books. Is this all? he wondered. All that was really different between the dimensions? Just that I _read_? He threw the books against the wall, and a small sheaf of photographs fluttered out from behind the cover of one. Lister stooped and picked them up.

They were, again, too familiar. Gran, looking almost identical to his gran. The Jupiter-rise shot that everyone takes, including alternate-him. Various drunken hold-camera-at-arms'-length pictures with Petersen and Selby. Kochanski - wearing a deep blue dress that he had never seen _his_ Kochanski wear, but still shooting that pinball smile that made his knees weak. A picture of him and Rimmer.

Lister sat on the bunk, looking them over again. Something made him look more closely at the picture of him and Rimmer. In his dimension, he had a picture like that - he only kept it because Kochanski had taken it. She had walked in and snapped the picture as Rimmer and Lister both looked up at the open door. But in this picture, Lister had one hand on top of Rimmer's. Such a small thing, but Rimmer was not a touch-person. Everything became horribly clear to Lister, at that point. What was so different about this dimension that made it safe to travel to from his own. Why this alternate Lister had actually started to read. Why Rimmer hadn't gone into the game to rescue his alternate.

He was afraid that his Lister had found something Better Than Life in there.

Lister pulled out his lighter, flicked it on, and touched the flame to the edge of the photograph. He held it until it was just a puff of carbon dust, and blew it out of his hand.


	2. Hollow

**A/N: Some backstory on the 'alternate' Rimmer and Lister.**

Arnold J. Rimmer's job. Keep Lister sane.

Holly was fecking nuts.

Rimmer looked at where Lister sat on his upper bunk, reading slowly and ponderously from the book that Rimmer had browbeaten him into agreeing to read aloud for the benefit of the unable-to-turn-pages hologram. He looked perfectly sane. Calm, with one leg crossed over the other, his back against his JMC regulation pillow, one stubby chewed-nail finger slowly tracing the words, the other hand twiddling his rasta plaits. It was Arnold smegging Rimmer who needed someone to keep _him_ sane. Made of light, couldn't feel anything, couldn't touch anything, couldn't affect the world at all. Well, he could touch himself, and he had done damn well enough of _that_. He couldn't taste, touch, or smell; if he kept _that_ up, he'd only have hearing left, and listening to the screeching cacophony Lister called music would certainly push him over the edge.

Rimmer put the brakes on that line of thought, and tried to listen to Lister read aloud. The man read so _slowly_, though, and in such a bloody flat voice... but Rimmer couldn't turn pages. He bit the sleeve of his iridescent red uniform and started to chew, knowing that he would guess what the word Lister was about to read would be when the man was only halfway through it, and would have to wait while Lister sounded it out... and then the next one... and then the next one. Even for monosyllabic words. Like 'out.' Rimmer's mind wandered away from Lister's maddening reading style yet again, and he found himself looking at Lister's profile. It didn't help things. He knew that Lister had soft brown skin, and that he loved to be kissed on the cheek, and licked on the underside of the chin, but that didn't do Rimmer any good, did it? He was made of light, and light could not give blow jobs. Or receive them. He started to chew on his sleeve in earnest.

Lister noted the movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned. "Hey, man, what's up?"

Rimmer spat out his sleeve. "Oh, nothing. I just - can't stand the pathos. Of the story. Maybe you should stop for now." Considering that the book in question was Goodnight Moon, that might come across as a bit odd, but Rimmer was tired of it. How had Lister gotten into the Space Corps with the reading skills of a rank member of Congress? It would take forever to get him to the point where he could read Lolita at this rate.

Lister shrugged and put a scrap of lettuce from the evening's kebab in the book as a placeholder. "Righ'. Let's finish it another night. Hard work, reading."

"Yes," Rimmer muttered, lacing his fingers together and jiggling his leg.

"Yeh want to sleep in my bunk tonight?" Lister asked. Rimmer shook his head. It had seemed like such a sweet idea at first - sharing a bunk as they sometimes did before Rimmer died - but Lister inevitably wound up clutching in his sleep for the one thing that was solid - Rimmer's light bee - and hugging it, leaving Rimmer's projection three-quarters overlapped with Lister's body. Rimmer hated this reminder that he was dead and incorporeal. He'd rather sleep alone and be frustrated.

Lister shrugged and hopped down from the bunk, putting the book on the table. He bent down to kiss Rimmer on the cheek, moving too far and kissing him somewhere in the middle of one of Rimmer's molars. He had initially been very careful with his faux kisses, carefully guiding his lips to brush the edge of Rimmer's projection, but he had gotten less and less careful about that as time had gone on. Lister turned out the lights, because he could, hopped back into his bunk, wrapped himself in a blanket, and started to snore.

Rimmer sat at the table in the middle of their quarters, unmoving. Every time Lister did something he couldn't - like flicking a light switch, or wrapping himself in a blanket - Rimmer became more and more envious, until lately, it seemed he would choke on it. Not that it would matter, as he did not need to breathe anyway. Touch. Lister could touch. Could touch someone else the way he used to touch Rimmer. Some Cat-girl, some GELF-girl, eventually, would feel those short fingers ghost over her skin, would feel those full lips spread butterfly kisses over her cheek, would have a tongue that tasted of cigarettes run along the inside of her mouth, would have him sprawl across her back with his hands gripping her shoulders, pushing so deep that his balls would slap against her, rising to a rhythmic crescendo in harmony with his gasps as he came. Rimmer was now erect, of course, and he was damned if he was going to masturbate and pretend his own thin fingers were Lister's. He flopped face-down on his bunk, not in the least bit sleepy, and listened to Lister's irregular, liquid snores.

Where _could_ they go from here? Earth? Earth was three million years away, the human race extinct. Nothing left of it but hardy GELFs, rouge simulants, one human male, and a projection of his ex-lover. Lister was looking for a home. What was Rimmer looking for? All he had in life had been Lister and his dogged (if much-mocked) desire to become an officer. Now he just had his smegging mission. Keep Lister sane. That would not be his mission for long. As soon as Lister found his next lover - something better than unable-to-touch, unable-to-satisfy Rimmer - Arnie J. would be superfluous, wouldn't he?

As if he weren't already.

Rimmer lay awake long into the night. As he had done every night he had been a hologram. As he would continue to do, long after Lister found something Better Than Life. As he would continue to do, long after Lister died.


	3. Gay

Tommy, aka "Stinky," Bateman rubbed his dribbling nose on the sleeve of his uniform jacket, in flagrant disregard of the mores of neatness that all of their mothers had labored so hard to instill. Arnold Rimmer drew in a sharp breath in admiration of the boy's audacity. "Can't garrin' stand this smeg they make us do," Stinky snarled, waving his lessons-book around like he was guiding a spaceship in to land. Arnold envied his easy use of profanity, as well. Profanity stumbled out of his own lips like his father out of the loo after a few too many pulls from his bottle of medicine. "Master Tibbons is a bastard."

Bertie Franks nodded. He turned and spat, a perfect projectile of phlegm and saliva that smacked the small frog that was its target. "You said it, Stinky. The man's a smegger."

Stinky sat on a small stone and grinned, an evil rictus grin with no humor. "I heard me dad talking to me mum about him. Said that he talked to the bugger, and swears up and down he's gay."

All of the other boys sniggered, which should have been Arnold's clue to snigger right along. Instead, he said, with the social ineptitude that was his hallmark, "What's gay?"

Bertie turned his unmatched spit-targeting skills to Arnold's shoes. "_You're_ gay, Bonehead."

"No, I'm not!" Arnold piped up, catching the clue too late, and trying to surreptitiously wipe the quivering pool of mucus off of his shoe and onto the grass.

Even someone of Stinky's limited mental capacity could find the flaw in that statement, and he grabbed it. "How do you know? You just said you didn't know what gay is, twonk!" he jeered. Bobby Darroch laughed and pushed Arnold onto his arse.

It took them about a minute and a half to tire of laughing at Arnold's newfound gaiety, and to make unflattering comparisons between him and Tibbons. They moved on to making a toad smoke until it exploded, using a cigarette Stinky had lifted from his father's night-table. All in all, Arnold thought, he got off fairly easily.

xxxxxx

He was not going to get out of algebra that easily, he thought later that evening. The numbers danced and spun in front of his eyes, making no sense at all. Mathematics was just not his subject, Arnold decided, throwing it into the mental bin that held languages, history, geography, music, painting, and sports. The bin was getting quite full, and there was little left outside of it. Perhaps it would help if he took one huge source of puzzlement out of his head. He had been gnawing at it all afternoon, and his teeth were sore.

"Mum," he asked, putting the book down and turning in his chair, "what does it mean when a bloke is gay?"

Two hours and a good-sized bar of soap later, Arnold still did not know what being gay actually was. But he had a very good grasp of the practical notion that it was a very bad thing to be.

xxxxxx

Lister twiddled his fingers as he lay on the top bunk, the lights dimmed for sleep. He was finding it very hard, lately, to fall asleep without hearing the whiffle of Rimmer's sleep-breathing below. He hated to think about what the hologram was thinking, or what he might _do_ after Lister was asleep. Yes, he was an incorporeal hologram, but fears do not have to be rational to keep you up at night.

He had been too long without a woman. That was part of it. Only a few years if you counted the Backwards world, but backwards-sex, with the complete knowledge of its will-have-happened that came with a sore cock and sweaty sheets, squirts of come jumping into his cock with shudders of orgasm, horniness slowly ebbing as foreplay came to a beginning - well, that was hardly satisfying. So it was over half a lifetime since he had experienced _real_ sex. Good sex, where you're not sure if it's going to happen, and the thrill of the tongues meeting, when you finally _know_, makes the rest of it that much better. Yes, far too long. Combine that with his sixteen-year-old nonstop sex drive, and he was willing to forgive himself the oddities that intruded into his sexual thoughts. Masturbation lost its thrill when it was _all_ you had, so it only made sense that his subconscious would try to spice it up a bit. Kryten was sexless (and by god, the very idea was disgusting), and Cat was too close, too _possible_, so of course said subconscious would fixate on the two impossibles, the hologram and the dead man. His wet dreams and masturbatory fantasies were therefore rather full of Ace, and Rimmer, and Rimmer as Ace, and Ace as Rimmer. Even so, he could not stand the thought that Rimmer was beating his light-projected tadger to thoughts of _him_, any smegging version of him.

The sleep-breath still hadn't started.

Lister sighed, and leaned over the side of the bunk, looking into Rimmer's face, barely visible in the dim light. Rimmer raised one eyebrow.

"Oi, smeghead..." Lister trailed off as he realized his mind was completely blank. Smeg, say something. "Dija love him?" Oh, hell, anything but that.

Lister was started at the intensity of disgust that crossed Rimmer's features. "Of course I didn't smegging love him!"

Lister flopped back on his bunk. He hadn't expected an answer like that. It didn't jibe with what he remembered of the photograph. He wished he had kept it, to check his memory - but no, he had burned it for a reason. A damn good reason. This.. oddity had nothing to do with _him_-him. Just some long dead not-him him who was not in a position to care anymore. He didn't even know how that not-him him felt about all of it. He probably preferred it that way.

Lister found himself slipping to sleep, to his irritation. Falling asleep before Rimmer always brought on his least favorite of the wet dreams - the ones where Ace turned into Rimmer. Petulance was the last thing he felt before his eyes closed of their own accord.

Rimmer shivered below him, wondering where _that_ bloody question had come from. Love Lister? Had he loved _Lister_? For fuck's sake, he wasn't smegging gay. Yes, they had fun. It was rather enjoyable to have someone who actually found him _interesting_. Yes, Lister had not been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that was part of why. This Lister wasn't quite so simple (although still a grotty, classless bastard, make no mistake) and did not feel at all the same way. Certainly, Rimmer might wish it were otherwise. But that was perfectly normal; he deserved respect, he did, and it was just that teenage other-Lister's own stubbornness that made him not _see_ that very basic fact.

Rimmer shrugged, wiggling against the sheets, annoyed, as always, that he did not sink comfortably into them. Love. What a smegging concept. What a smegging insult.


	4. Bursts

_thwippp_

Rimmer jerked awake, his head passing through the bunk above him. He staggered out of the bunk, grabbing his head. Hell. That had been one smegging strange dream. He had actually felt something. He dreamed in sight, mostly; strange dreams where he was a disembodied presence who could not stop amorphously terrible things from happening. Sex dreams with no sensation and no satisfaction, as well. But he had definitely felt something in that one, a twinge like an electric spark. He took a deep breath, standing in the middle of the room, and looked at the blood-red light of the clock. Three a.m. He didn't have to sleep longer, but the ship was eerie at night. He walked back to his bunk.

_thwippp_

He stumbled back. That hadn't been a dream. Something had happened in his arm, something that sent a teeth-rattling squirt of energy through him. Smegging hell! His light bee must be malfunctioning! "Lights! Lister!" he yelled, in a panic.

The lights came up to reveal Lister, curled up in his bunk, one dreadlock curled around into his mouth, chewing on it absently in his sleep. His liquid snores paused with a snort, and he opened his eyes, blearily. "Whu?"

"Something's wrong with my light bee!"

Lister sighed. "Whu?"

"I don't know! It's just..." Rimmer waved his arms, irate that he could not express himself better. "It's thwippping!"

Lister furrowed his brow. "Whatinhell is twiping?" he slurred, still half-asleep.

"How should I know, you grotty space-bum?" Rimmer yelped, dancing as his leg _thwippp_ed. "It just is! Get Kryten!"

Lister sighed, plopped out of bed, scratched his head, scratched his crotch, and stumbled towards Rimmer with his hand outspread. Rimmer backed away. "Wash your hand before you touch my bee!" he shrieked, watching that hand descend. Lister paid no attention and grabbed the bee, opening the door and walking down the corridor, his hand swinging at his side. Rimmer found himself half-sunk into the floor, thrashing helplessly. "You smegging bastard!" he yelled.

Cat ran out into the corridor behind them, his hair in rollers. "What's with the damn racket? I need my beauty sleep!"

Lister turned to answer. That meant that both he and the Cat were facing Rimmer when the next _thwippp_ happened. A burst of yellow sparks came out of his chest as he twitched. Cat frowned and cocked his head. "What's up with alphabetti-spaghetti head?"

"I dunno. I think something's wrong with his light bee." Oh, _you_ think, Rimmer thought irately. Maybe because I smegging _told_ you. Lister took no notice of the glare Rimmer shot him. "I'm going to track down Kryten and see what he thinks."

"Nothing wrong with you, though, bud?" Cat asked. Lister shook his head. "Good. If you need me, don't bother looking, because I'm going to nap." Cat headed back to... wherever he slept. Rimmer had no clue. He didn't give a good swut, either.

"You stuck-up, prissy twonk of a dumbass pussyfooting empty-headed smegging cat turd!" Rimmer yelled as Lister dragged him up the corridor. "Your ten thumbs would only screw things up more, so good riddance!" he shrieked around the corner that Lister doggedly turned.

xxxxxx

Kryten looked at the diagnostics readout on the computer. Rimmer's light bee dangled from a cord attached to it - just as the other Rimmer's had dangled, Lister thought, smoking and half-melted. He felt vaguely ill.

"Diagnostics check," Kryten said, his face expressing as much puzzlement as a face molded on a half-complete Tetris game can. "There is nothing wrong with Mister Rimmer's light bee." He detached the bee from the cord and switched it on as he tossed it away. Rimmer reformed around it.

"There must be somethin' wrong," Lister said, his brow furrowed. "He was thwipppin' and all while Cat and I were watching."

Rimmer straightened his already-straight uniform. "Yes, I have been," he looked irately at Lister, "thwippin'." What are yeh mad at _me_ for, Lister groused internally. I'm just tryin' to help, you sodding ungrateful bastard. Rimmer turned his glare on Kryten. "If everything's tickety-boo, why _that_?"

Kryten tapped at a keyboard, his eyes on the monitor above rather than on Rimmer's glare. "We seem to be heading through a muon storm. Some local high concentration."

"So?" Rimmer asked, crossing his arms, then wincing as his forehead _thwippp_ed, right through the H. It was too comical - Lister could not help giggling. If glares could kill, he would have dropped dead on the spot - but Rimmer's, at least, couldn't, and he didn't.

Holly sighed. "Muons decay to form electrons and positrons, don't they?" she interjected from the monitor from where she had been watching, her tone bored and condescending. Lister didn't mind much - the computer certainly had more knowledge of physics (if not partying, lying, and insulting, which Lister was happy to make his own specialty) than anyone else in the room, but Rimmer looked even more irate. Lister wondered if he had an upper limit. "Your projection seems to enhance that decay. Then the positrons annihilate with the electrons in your projection. Simple as that."

Kryten nodded. "Annoying, but not harmful to you, in the long run."

"Thanks," Rimmer spat, "was that from Particle Physics for Dummies?" Holly looked vaguely abashed. "Yes, it is smegging annoying!" Rimmer barked. "What do I do?"

"Wait," Kryten said, with a square smile. "We can either turn you off, or you can deal with the sensation."

"You are not smegging turning me off," Rimmer growled.

"Fine, then. This party is over," Lister interjected quickly, stifling a yawn. Nobody was in danger, and Rimmer had made his choice of how to wait it out. He was tired. "I'm going back to bed." He walked back to their shared quarters, Rimmer tagging behind, and tried to ignore the hologram's grousing and swearing.

xxxxxx

_thwippp thwippp_

Rimmer jerked like a fish on a line. The storm had only become thicker, and for the last two days, the muons had been hitting his projection almost nonstop. His naturally unsunny disposition had only been exacerbated by the constant _thwippp_ing and lack of sleep. "I am smegging tired of this crap!" he yelled.

Lister and Cat sighed and focused very pointedly on their game of draughts. Rimmer spun, looking at Kryten. The mechanoid raised his eyebrows. "There is another option. I don't think you'll like it, though." He did not pause in his careful dusting of the central console.

"Spit it out," Rimmer growled. Worse or better - it almost didn't matter. It would be a change from this bloody _thwippp_ing.

"I spoke with Holly. There are experimental projection devices in the ship's lab," Kryten said, coolly. He put down the duster and pulled out a soft chamois, using it to apply wax to the console keyboard. "Some of them are for solid-light projections. They might be immune to this effect. The downside," Kryten sighed, wiping off excess wax with one edge of the chamois, "is that you would be corporeal."

Rimmer stood stock-still, not even jerking as three more _thwippp_s went through him. Something that felt like what he vaguely remembered ice water to be like was trickling down his simulated spine. "I would - _what_?" Rimmer asked, very quietly.

"Be tangible."

Rimmer dashed across the room, standing right in front of Kryten - vaguely aware that he was up to his waist in console, and that Lister and Cat were staring. "I would smegging _what_?" he screeched.

Kryten sighed, buffing the keyboard with a fresh chamois, including the keys that Rimmer's projection overlapped onto. "I know. I thought you wouldn't be interested." _thwippp_

"I w... w..." Rimmer could no longer speak. He could have been solid, real. All this time. He could have eaten and drank and felt and tasted and been fucked by _his_ Lister, and he hadn't, and the means were here, they were here, and he hadn't.. Kryten hadn't.. no... Rimmer swung a fist through the mechanoid's head, uselessly. "You smegging goddam get of a bogbot and a tabloid publisher..." Rimmer felt like he was foaming at the mouth.

"Em, Kryters," Lister's voice said, calmly, "I think he _wants_ that."

Rimmer spun to face Lister, staggering out of the console. _thwipppthwipppthwippp_ "You think? You smegging _think_?" he bawled.

"Hmph," Kryten said. Rimmer turned to face him, seething, as the mechanoid folded the chamois neatly.

Holly blinked in and shook her head. "If only he had mentioned that, what?"


	5. Loss

Rimmer was lying on a cold, hard bench.

He kept his eyes closed for a moment, relishing that. He could _feel_ that the bench was cold and hard. No faith in this fact was required. All of the way down its back, it impressed its cold and hard nature into him.

"Arn?" Holly's voice asked.

"What?" he asked, feeling... smegging euphoric.

"You all right, there?"

Rimmer opened his eyes, seeing her impassive face staring down at him from a monitor across the room, and Kryten's slightly worried, angular excuse for a face staring down right next to him. "All right?" He tasted the idea, getting off of the bed carefully, very carefully. Edges and surfaces under his legs. His hands gripping the cool plastic. Feet making contact with the floor. Complete, utter, smegging bliss. His first two steps were stumbles, and he grabbed Kryten's shoulder plate to stay upright, thrilling at the feel of smooth plastisteel under his hand. He grabbed Kryten's syntho-skin face between his hands, rubbing up and down, to Kryten's visible consternation. "I feel fansmeggingtastic!" he bellowed, pressing a kiss to Kryten's quivering, chilly, jelly-rubber lips. He ran out of the medibay, laughing like an idiot and not caring. Behind him, Holly's voice floated - "Oh, hell."

Rimmer ran to his quarters. Ran! Jolts of deck against his feet! He touched wall panels as he ran by, just feather touches. Anything more would be too much! He wanted to lick the Door Open switch, but hit it with the heel of his hand, running into the room and standing in the middle, his brain singing a mantra - whattotouch, whattotouch, whattotouch? He ran over to the far wall, stroking it, running his fingers up and down the ragged seam, edges catching at his fingers. He felt the sensual bulge of rivets against his fingers. He... yes, what the hell. He licked it. Bitter metal and grime and grease and smeg knows what else - a banquet for a sense-starved tongue. Oh, god, yes, he thought as he licked it again; smeg, yes! He ran to the little kitchenette, shivering as he pulled the cabinet's handle, and took down a glass. He held it between his hands for a moment, stroking it, relishing its glassy tactile nature, before filling it with water.

The door hissed open again. "Oi, smeghead." Even Lister's sullen teenagerish voice could not dampen Rimmer's mood. He lifted the glass, sniffing the faint non-scent of water, then took a gulp. Water flowed down his throat, smooth, clean, cold - he was in paradise. Smegging paradise. He turned, putting his back against the wall - sensation, impossible sensation! - and took another sinful, decadent gulp of water. He finished the glass, then held it in his hands, feeling the glass between his palms, panting for a reason that had nothing to do with air. The smooth, slick miracle of glass! He rubbed it in his hands, gripping it tightly.

"Eh... I guess..." Lister looked doubtfully at Rimmer, then at the glass in his hands, noting what must be an incredibly stupid expression of bliss on Rimmer's face. Rimmer didn't care. The rest of the world could go to Hades on a motorbus. He could feel! He gripped the glass between his hands, tighter, tighter, until it shattered, fragments digging into his palms with intense, sharp pain. He looked down at them, blood running freely from the cuts, fading to nothing as it dripped off of his hands. This pain, too, was sensation, and he marveled at it.

"Oh, eh!" Lister yelped. "What the smeg are you _doin'_?" He ran forward, grabbing Rimmer's hands and forcing them apart and upwards. He grabbed the right one with his left hand, picking the shards of glass out of it with his own right hand.

Rimmer started to shiver in earnest, wracking, body-wide shivers. Lister's hands. They were something more than metal or glass or syntho-skin. The warmth, texture, vitality, pulsating blood, all sang a symphony of physical sensation that was far too loud for him. He pressed himself against the wall, trying to halt the shudders.

"Oi! What the smeg is up with you, you tosser?" Lister asked in exasperation, as Rimmer's hands shook along with the rest of him. Now finished with the right hand, Lister grabbed Rimmer's left hand, more tightly, and started to pick the glass out of it. Rimmer looked at those hands, mesmerized. Stubby, short fingers with chewed-to-the-quick nails. Warm. Soft. Had _his_ Lister's hands been like this? How could he have been so cavalier? Had he just so utterly and completely forgotten? He started to whimper, cringing at the sound but powerless to stop.

Lister looked up, startled. Whatever he saw in Rimmer's face, it made him drop Rimmer's hand and slowly back away. Too slowly. Rimmer reached out and grabbed Lister's cheeks between his hands, stroking them, leaving streaks of bright red that faded to nothing as his hands fell away. Too much. An excess of sensation, that softness, those lines! But Rimmer's hands felt cold and naked, and so he reached out and grabbed Lister's cheeks again, kneading, rubbing, running his fingers over Lister's nose, his eyelids, his short wiry hair, his too-soft-too-sensual lips. Rimmer lunged forwards, pushing his own lips against Lister's, and Lister's mouth opened almost immediately. Rimmer was whimpering in earnest, now, almost whining like a kicked cur, rubbing Lister's face far too hard, sticking his tongue into Lister's mouth to taste nicotine and lager and not-brushed-teeth, but it was magnificent! He felt horniness at this, but it was just one small part of his overwhelming sense of _finally_ and _too long without_. Lister was feeling horniness, some part of his mind observed, as the other man - no, the _boy_ - grabbed Rimmer's buttocks and pulled, hard, squeezing, and ran his tongue inside of Rimmer's mouth, bumping Rimmer's tongue as if to knock it out of his way.

They shook and staggered, locked in a bizarre wrestling match, each trying to open the other's mouth wider with his own tongue, grabbing and tearing at clothing. Lister seemed to have a bit more of an idea of where he was going than Rimmer, and the backs of Rimmer's knees bumped against his bunk. Ah, less than an hour ago, that sensation would have been enough to push anything else out of Rimmer's mind, but other sensations were rapidly falling into a place of decreased importance next to skin and stubble and teeth and sweat. Lister grabbed Rimmer low on the buttocks and heaved, landing on top of Rimmer as Rimmer landed on the bunk, clonking his head against the wall. A moment of dizziness resolved into Lister straddling him awkwardly, shirt on, trousers shoved down to his ankles, which were crossed atop Rimmer's pushed-together legs. Lister had a feral, almost angry, expression on his face as he grabbed Rimmer's hands and put them on his own cock - uncircumcised, Rimmer noted, not like his, as he slipped the foreskin down with one hand, hardly able to believe the slickness of the skin, the precome that skated his finger over the head. The bumps and veins were a feast for Rimmer's too-long-incorporeal hands, and he stroked up and down, hard, hand over hand, lubricated by his own blood, faster and faster. A trickle of drool made its way out of the corner of his mouth. Lister threw his head back, moaning, as he came. His come dribbled over Rimmer's hands, and Rimmer put them to his mouth and started to lick. Salty? Bitter. Tangy, with his own blood mixed in.

Rimmer forgot about taste for a moment as Lister ripped his red trousers open and pulled out his cock. The boy stroked it twice, then lowered his head, tongue out. He appeared to change his mind, however, and bit Rimmer's cock, quite hard. Sensation being sensation, and Rimmer being overstimulated, he came, thrashing about on the sheet as Lister fell back to avoid his flailing limbs. Rimmer's wildly waving hands finally grabbed the blanket like an anchor of sanity, caressing its cool roughness. His rational mind returned as his shudders quieted, his hands still gripping the blanket tightly, and that rational mind took in the situation, aghast. Shirt and trousers ripped open, hands bloody, Lister's come and his own rapidly drying to a sticky crust on his stomach, drool sliding down the corner of his mouth. He licked up the drool and shut his mouth with a snap, struggling to a sitting position that was not nearly dignified enough to make up for... well, everything else. Certainly not Lister standing beside the bed, tugging his trousers back up, looking almost as aghast as Rimmer felt. Boy, Rimmer had thought during the... the.. whatever they had just done, and it hit him right between the eyes as the _boy_, no more than sixteen and a half, stared back at him, wide-eyed. Rimmer swallowed.

"You..." Lister licked his lips, and his face fell back into its sullen teenage glare. "I'm not _your_ Lister," he spat. He turned, stalking to the door, and slapped the Door Open switch. "Pervert," he blew over his shoulder, like smoke from one of his vile cigarettes. The word floated its stinking way through the air to Rimmer as the door closed, and Rimmer lay back on his bunk, inhaling it, not trusting himself to loose his grip on the blanket. His body paid no attention to the fact that he had _enough_ sensation, for now, and sang its song of _itchy blanket_ and _cool air_ and _sticky semen_.

Perhaps the thwippps hadn't been so unbearable, after all.


	6. Drunk

Lister ran down to the locker room, hefting an emergency axe he had found in a wall bracket. Not as elegant as a hammer and chisel, but it would get the smegger open. Time to test how similar this parallel Red Dwarf was to the old one. He made a beeline for Number 196. That had been a find, back on _his_ Red Dwarf. Two hard whacks with the axe pulverized the lock, and a sideways whack and a wrench twisted the door open with a screech of metal. He tossed the axe aside. The glass bottle inside said Grey Goose, not White Goose, but it was a fifth, and when he opened the bottle and took a sniff, it certainly smelled like vodka. Lise had sworn up and down that a shot of vodka would wash away the bitter taste of come like nothing else. After one good swig - and damn, that was at least as good as the stuff in the old universe - the bitter taste was still in Lister's mouth, though.

It only made sense. The hologrammatic blood had disappeared as soon as Rimmer's hands had left his body, so the hologrammatic come must have disappeared as soon as he jerked his mouth away, as well. The bitter taste was therefore not come, and would take a fair bit of vodka to wash away. Lister closed the bottle, tucked it under his arm, and pelted his way up to the observation deck. He was out of breath by the time he got there, and staggered his way up the steps, holding the railing. He collapsed on his back, staring up at the cold stars, constellations no human had ever seen. Or should see. He opened the bottle and took a long pull, gasping as it burned its way down his throat. One more. And another. There. Taste starting to go away. Probably because his ability to sense anything at all was disappearing. Good.

He had been too long without a woman, for damn sure. Far, far too long. Smeg, why had he backed away? He should have turned and ran, like he had just ran to the observation deck, as soon as he saw that look on Rimmer's face. That look of... Lister shivered, taking another pull from the bottle. Lust. Rimmer lusting after him! It was like... his old chemistry teacher lusting after him. Rimmer smelled like cheap aftershave and starch. Or _his_ Rimmer had, when he had been alive. This Rimmer had smelled like a calculator and tasted like computer screen. But that... bee had simulated the tactile sensation of a tongue and long, skinny fingers far too well. Not to mention the stiffness of that oddly altered cock (he had heard that outworlders had strange habits, and had truly not needed this example), the way precome had leaked sluggishly out of it, the spurt of warm, bitter semen that had hit the roof of his mouth after he had bit it - smegging _bit_ it!

Lister shook his head, taking another pull from the bottle. Crazy goddam pervert. Lusting after a boy half his age. _Licking_ Lister's come off of his hands. Getting off on having his cock smegging bitten.

Another drink. Lean head back on hands. Better.

The worst part of it all was that smegging slack-jawed look of idiotic ecstasy on Rimmer's face as he came. It was familiar. Too familiar. It was just the same as the look of bliss he had on his face when Lister first walked into the room, and he had been drinking a fecking glass of water. Testing out his smegging hard-light drive, he was, and going down the list of things to try, one by one. Water. Glass. Kissing. Fucking. Check. Lister shivered, thinking of the disgust on Rimmer's face at the thought of _loving_ his alternate. No, he was a smegging water glass to Rimmer, just something else to _try out_.

Lister finished the bottle off. Well, of course. And would he really want it any other way? Jesus poncing Christ, the only thing that could have made the whole experience worse would be to have Rimmer smegging mooning over him. He was a hundred and sixty years old; he had married, had kids, so why did he feel like the blasted teenager he looked? Lister threw the bottle at the synthiglass dome over his head, where it smashed satisfyingly, showering the small deck with sparkling shards. A yelp came from the ladder leading up to the deck. Lister tried to pull himself up onto his elbows, but slipped and fell onto his back again. Hell, he was drunk.

Cat's face loomed over him, and he blinked at it.

"Hey, bud," Cat asked, his brow furrowed, "what's goin' down? You look like a dog turd."

It was probably completely true, but it was nonetheless nothing Lister was in a mood to hear. He glared at Cat. "Smeg off."

Cat danced to the other side of Lister, and loomed over him from there. "You smell funny." His nostrils quivered. "You smell like you do when you beat off - well, you smell like that all the time - but angry-like, now." Cat's nose wrinkled. "And you smell drunk as a skunk." He sat back on his haunches, and Lister had to flop his head on the side to keep him in sight. Cat scratched his nose and straightened his cuffs. "It's mailbox-number head, isn't it." Cat cocked his head, regarding Lister from another angle. "Want me to kill him for you?"

Lister smiled faintly. "Neh, man. Shanks, but won't help anything."

Cat tapped one perfectly manicured nail against a long incisor. "It'd make _me_ feel better. That's a help." He leapt down and crouched next to Lister. "C'mon, bud, please?"

Lister could never tell when the Cat was serious. Probably all the time, Lister thought, and just forgot things before he followed through. Forgot everything. "Yeh know what yeh can do?" Lister paused, licking his lips. "Yeh can ghet.. me.. nuther drink."

Cat leapt to his feet with a grace that made Lister's head hurt. "Sure thing, bud! Awwww!" Cat swung around on one toe and danced down the ladder.

Lister was drunk enough to not consider that it would be a miracle for the Cat to still remember the errand once he reached the bottom of the stairs, let alone deign to actually follow through on it. And so he waited, watching the stars swim in front of his eyes. Like he was at the bottom of a tank of... something. Strange, he thought; they don't normally do that. It was all too surreal. Like one of his wet dreams, the ones where Ace turned to Rimmer. Maybe that's what it was. Some too-real wet dream that he had run up here to recover from. That made plenty of sense. He'd sneak back later, and Rimmer would be asleep and whiffling on the bottom bunk, his uniform neat, his bed unmussed. Yes.

Lister closed his eyes.


	7. Engines, pt 1

After three months of corporeality, the ability to drum his fingers testily on a tabletop still thrilled Rimmer. He drummed testily. He thrilled. "Just what the smeg are you telling us, Holly?"

"That muon storm must've cocked up the engines, somehow," she replied, typically laconic. "My monitors from Deck 1807 on down packed up, too, so I can't tell what's goin' on down there."

Rimmer steepled his forefingers and rested his chin on them. "Thank you, Holly. You're as useful as an American football commentator."

Lister sighed, with a pointed excess of volume. He dropped his feet from off of the console, and let his chair thump back down onto all four legs. "Think you can do better, eh? Go prove it."

Rimmer turned to him, one eyebrow raised. "I _beg_ your pardon?"

Cat grinned a toothy grin. "Yeah, electron-brain, he's right. Why don't _you_ go tell us what's wrong?" He adjusted his cuffs with a smug expression on his face.

Rimmer sighed. Honestly, those teenagers could be so smegging dense sometimes. "Because it isn't my job, maties. It's the job of some stupid swut in maintenance."

"Well, seeing as all the stupid swuts in maintenance are dead, and you're the only dead stupid swut who can move, I think it's your job now. Besides," Lister lapsed into an exaggeratedly pompous version of Rimmer's voice, "you're my superior technician! You're better equipped to handle a situation of this magnitude..."

Ire at Lister slowly morphed into a rather more productive set of thoughts as this speech came to an end. Yes, why not go down there? True, he knew sod-all about engines, but Holly would be in contact, and would tell him what to do. Head down there, find out what's wrong, fix it, show Listy up - and if anything went wrong, he could blame it on Holly's directions. Not a bad thought, Arn! He jumped to his feet with his favorite vulture grin, enjoying the way Lister's own grin slipped from his face in the face of Rimmer's unexpected enthusiasm. "Terrific thought, that! I'll just pay a little visit to the bog-cleaning tin can, and put the Listy plan in action. Capital!" Cat cocked his head bemusedly as he and Lister watched Rimmer's sprightly exit.

"What _is_ that?" Rimmer asked, taking it in two fingers. It was too heavy to be held that way, so he was forced to grab it underneath with his other hand.

"A bazookoid, sir," Kryten replied, brightly. "It's for blasting holes in rock to set charges, but it makes a fair weapon, I think."

"It looks like Pamela Anderson's favorite dildo," Rimmer said, doubtfully. "Didn't the officers have sidearms?"

"Yes, sir, but Holly said that we do not have the security clearance to access them."

"Did she, now?" Rimmer snarled, looking in the direction of the control room.

Kryten coughed politely. "Ah, as much as you may wish to settle this dispute with her, may I suggest that the engine problem should probably be resolved in a time frame shorter than that of any previous argument you've had with her? Besides," Kryten continued, stepping back, "the bazookoid makes you look rather... manly."

Rimmer slung it over his shoulder and looked down at himself. "Really?"

"Oh, yes," Kryten replied, with utter sincerity etched on every angle of his face.

Rimmer paused at deck 15 and took in the view. It was exactly the same view as the floor above, and the floor one thousand floors above. Holly had dropped him off ten floors away from the engine bay, mumbling something about wanting to ensure his safety that he did not believe for a moment. Rimmer sighed. Whole cities on Io were smaller than the Red Dwarf floors, so perhaps it had made sense that the designers had run out of ideas. Exposed piping, exposed gantries, and exposed wiring gave the ship a we-cut-a-few-corners-in-the-end-but-they'll-never-notice-before-it's-too-late look. Rimmer plodded his way down the central corridor to the stairway at the far end of the floor. The emergency stairs had been installed by a company that normally put escalators in shopping centres, and had not been told that getting from floor to floor rapidly should be a priority for this particular job, not requiring people to traverse the entirety of the floor to get one floor lower.

The skutters had set up a bit of a civilization on deck 14, and Rimmer was accosted at the base of the stairs by two skutters dressed in feathers and chains, holding two of those sidearms that Holly had not allowed him access to. He told them he was just passing through, so kindly sod off. They consulted, then presented him with a Skutter City Day Pass, which was made out of what looked disturbingly like a human pelvic bone.

The remainder of the two days it took him to reach the engine room passed in a blessedly uneventful fashion, however, and he arrived at the massive doors to the massive engine room. They were large enough to admit an entire engine, climbing their grease-streaked way into darkness above, which Rimmer found asinine, as the corridors on his side of said doors were nowhere near large enough to admit a fraction of an engine. The low thrumming of the engines had gotten louder as he approached; they had done so subtly that he had barely noticed, but now, stopped outside of the engine room, the noise shook the floor.

"Holly?"

"Whot?" Holly's voice asked from his bee. It felt like someone in his stomach was trying to talk out of his throat. He shifted uncomfortably.

"The engines are very clearly _on_."

"Good sign, that, but I'm not gettin' power from one of 'em. There's some drain. You'll have to boogie on in there and check it out."

Rimmer sighed, looking at the gargantuan doors. "How do I open the engine room doors?"

"Welll..." Holly drawled, "I can open them from up here. It'll take them a week to get open to the point where you can walk in. But migh' I suggest the maintenance hatches?" she asked, tartly.

Rimmer thought unkind things about Holly's smarter-than-thou attitude as he walked closer to the door's left side, peering closely as he slowly moved right. With his nose practically up against it, he was finally able to see a grimy outline of a door-size hatch. He felt around the edges until his hand brushed a grotty handle, and he turned it and pulled.

The space inside was not so much a hatch as a tunnel. The only light was what small amount of dim ship's light seeped through from the open end. Rimmer crawled through it with unease, eventually banging his head against the door on the far side. He felt around until his hand grasped a handle. He twisted and pushed, and the door did not move. He pushed harder, and the door rattled and clanged, but stayed stubbornly shut. His pummeling did, however, dislodge the hatch at the far end, and it swung shut, leaving him in total darkness. In a panic, he threw himself at the door, hitting it over and over again with his shoulder. On the fifth pummel, the door gave way, and he found himself heading for the ground with all of the energy he had been flinging at the door behind him. The bazookoid tangled in his legs as he fell, and his crotch landed directly on it. He curled up for a moment, grabbing his painful testes with both hands and whimpering.

"What have we here?" said a voice that sounded like it dined on broken glass and washed it down with acid. Rimmer dithered with the equally unattractive options of trying to ignore whatever it was and actually looking at whatever it was. The choice was taken away when what felt like a steel bear trap grabbed his hair and pulled him up to his feet with it. Rimmer found himself staring into a pair of too-wide eyes set in a too-leathery face, one that was crisscrossed with strangely thin scars. Rimmer kept his hands folded protectively over his testicles.

"A human!" The creature - there was no way, Rimmer thought, that this _thing_, with its leathery skin pulled too tightly over its too-sharp bones, was human - grinned manically, like he had just found a naked woman in his box of cornflakes.

"Er, I'm a hologram," Rimmer squeaked.

"Argh!" the... thing spat, as if the naked woman had turned out to be a transvestite. He stuck the pinky and ring finger of his free hand into Rimmer's nostrils, let go of Rimmer's hair, and pulled the hologram up to his tiptoes nasally. "You'll do." He stuck his freakish eyes close to Rimmer's. "My name is Batriz N'ncloodid." It had the singsong quality of a ritual statement. "I am going to make you scream." He pulled a knife the size of a man's forearm out of his greenish vinyl jumpsuit, and lifted his arm back.

"Wait!" Rimmer yelped. "You want humans? There are humans here. Well, one. Well, he's mostly human. Really. And a cat." Words were tripping over each other in their hurry to exit his mouth. His nose felt like it was going to be pulled off of his face.

Batriz paused. "Really?" Rimmer tried to nod, and failed. Batriz seemed to get the idea, though. "If you're playing with me, scum, I'm going to give you a slow, painful death. Nothing quick and merciful like having your intestines pulled out through your ear and force-fed to you while you're buggered with a small cactus, savvy?" He pulled his fingers out of Rimmer's nostrils, which Rimmer felt must be of a size to admit one of Starbug's engines after that experience, and Rimmer fell back to the floor. Batriz kicked him in the stomach and picked up his ankle. "Where?"

"Through that hatch... ooof!" Rimmer yelped as his head bumped its way along the floor. He talked Batriz across the floor, then up the stair that bonked his head with every step.


	8. Engines, pt 2

"Red alert," Holly drawled. "We have a problem, chaps."

"What is it, Hol?" Lister asked, putting down his cards. He was down to his shorts, and with the way his luck was going, he was grateful for the interruption.

"We've got an aganoid down in the engine room. I'm thinkin' he's responsible for draining power from the engines." She paused. "Oh, yeah, you wouldn't know. An aganoid is..."

"Yeah, we know," Lister interrupted. He had no wish to hear their inclinations described in any more graphic detail than he already had heard and inferred.

"Are you sure? They migh' be different in your dimension. In _this_ dimension, they're custom-made killing machines who wouldn't think twice about pullin' off..."

"Yes, they're the same thing, Hol!" Lister yelled. He started to tug his pants on, while Cat replaced the silk scarf and spats he had been forced to remove. "How many are there?"

"One, far as I can tell," Holly said. "Rimmer's bringing him up here."

Lister's jaw dropped. "Bringing him up here? Why?"

"Probably thinks he can trade his own lousy skin for ours," Cat spat.

Holly nodded. "More or less, yeah."

"I think that boy needs a little time-out," Cat said. "And I mean outside of the ship."

"How long will it take them to get up here?" Lister asked.

Holly's lips started to move as she bobbed her head back and forth. Lister watched, wondering if her mind had wandered, or if she had finally gone utterly nutters. "Hol?" he asked.

"Shu' it!" she snapped. "You'll make me lose count!" After another half-minute, she said, "One day, three hours, twenty-seven minutes, and thirty seconds. Give or take five hours. You can never tell, with those lifts." She nodded, satisfied.

"Right. We need to find out how to take care of the thing." Lister glanced over at Cat. "Bazookoids didn't do so well against them in our universe. How are they in this one?"

"Very similar," Kryten replied, not looking away from the monitor he was polishing. "They can withstand several bazookoid shots at close range with almost no effect." He squeaked his cloth against the monitor, stepped back, and nodded, satisfied. He turned to Cat and Lister. "May I suggest that I put on a space-suit and pretend to be you, Mister Lister, and lure the aganoid out into space? It will be certain death for me, but I think the control room is in tolerable shape..." Kryten looked around the too-clean control room with a critical eye.

"Sounds good to me!" Cat said, grinning.

Lister sighed. "Stop it! Nobody is swuttin' sacrificin' themselves. Especially not the only person who will touch me boxer shorts." He turned to Holly. "Any other options?"

"Yeah," she said. "An EMP."

"What's that?" Cat asked.

A memory tickled the back of Lister's mind. "Wasn't it this strange buildin' back on Earth that was all different colors and looked like a whale with a skin condition?"

"Different EMP. I'm talking about an electromagnetic pulse." Holly looked quite smug. "It knocks out all electronics in a vicinity. Get a small enough one, set it off close to that thing, and it'll knock 'im on his arse."

"Let's get a bigger one and not get anywhere near it," Cat sniffed.

"If you get a big one, it'll knock _me_ out, and then you'll just be flyin' blind through space."

"So, no change," Cat muttered.

"Where do we _find_ an... EMP?" Lister gamely plodded over the beginnings of the spat.

"Officers have access to little generators. They're stored with the sidearms," Holly replied.

"The ones we couldn't get into?"

"Well," Holly drawled, "the ones I wouldn't let Rimmer into. The code is 68943. Mosey in and pick one up."

Lister started to walk out, then paused. "What will it do to Rimmer?"

"Dunno, but probably not good," Holly replied. "You'll want him to shut himself off before you set the EMP off. If not... well..."

"...we might get a double-bonus," Cat concluded with a grin. The three of them hustled out to the arms cabinet, where Lister punched in the code. He and Cat tried to run in at once, and got stuck two-abreast in the door. After some struggling and cursing, they made their way into the small room and started to play with the guns, which they both found utterly fascinating. Kryten walked in behind them, picked up a handheld EMP generator, and after an hour or so, managed to get Lister and Cat out without shooting themselves or each other (although a perfectly inoffensive wall bracket did not fare so well).

Kryten could not go with them, because, he explained, the EMP would knock him out, as well, and there were just too many dirty dishes to be done to contemplate that. Lister therefore took the EMP generator down to the lifts a day later with just Cat trailing behind. They stacked some old fuel drums as a barricade that would, with luck, get the aganoid to slow down and give Lister a chance to tell Rimmer to turn himself off. That is to say, Lister stacked the drums and tried to get Cat to help him. Cat just sniffed at the greasy drums. "Dog's work, bud."

Rimmer's head was very sore. Partly because he had been dragged up ten flights of stairs and across ten city-length floors by one leg, and partly because Batriz had relieved the boredom of the long lift ride that followed by cutting off bits of Rimmer's nose and ears. He was quite fascinated by the way Rimmer's hologrammatic flesh would rapidly fill in and 'heal.' "Yeh sure you're not a human?" Rimmer assured Batriz that anything vaguely human about him was long-dead, but he could tell that the aganoid was starting to think of him as afters to the main course of tormented human.

He just prayed that Batriz would not feel cheated when he saw what passed for human on Red Dwarf.

The lift halted just about a finger's breadth short of the actual floor, so Rimmer got a good solid whack to the back of the head when Batriz took him by the ankle and pulled him out. He barely noticed when Batriz dropped his ankle and walked over to the pile of empty fuel drums, scratching his head. Lister's voice did penetrate his consciousness, however, as the fuzz cleared.

"Oi! Smeghead! Turn yerself off!"

"Smeg off, tumeric-breath," Rimmer groaned.

"Rimmeh!" Lister's voice hissed. "We're knockin' the aganoid out with an EMP. Turn yerself off so it doesn't take you with it!"

"You've got to be k..." Rimmer's voice was abruptly cut short in a squeak as Batriz walked back, grabbed his crotch, and picked him up by it. He seemed vaguely annoyed that he could not glare right at Rimmer with that handhold, and so used his other hand to grab the top of Rimmer's trousers and haul him up higher, so that his eyes were only inches from Batriz's.

"Those drums were moved here recently. Tell me what the trap is."

"I don't know." Rimmer was not terribly proud of the response, but he was actually quite cheered that it was in a post-pubescent voice.

Batriz shook him gently, and he bounced like a paddle-ball. "Tell me, and make it quick."

The bouncing made the bazookoid that was still slung around Rimmer's back - and had fetched him a number of good whacks during their trip back up - knock against his hands. He grabbed it, and with a triumphant "Ha ha!" fired into Batriz's side. A sizzling bolt spat out and smacked Batriz's side very firmly, vaporizing a section of his jumpsuit.

The aganoid gave Rimmer a vaguely offended look, as if Rimmer had pinched his bottom. He took the bazookoid in his free hand, and crushed it in his hand, very slowly.

Damn, Rimmer thought.

Lister had made his way back over to the Cat during this exchange. He looked on helplessly. "Hell," he hissed to Cat, "what do we _do_?"

Cat grabbed the small generator from Lister. "He had his chance, bud." He pointed it at the pair, and depressed the small button. The results were almost laughable - the little device beeped, and Lister smelled a whiff of ozone - but Rimmer disappeared, his bee falling to the ground with a metallic clonk, and the aganoid, stiff as a board, toppled over backwards.

Lister shifted a few of the drums out of the way, then trundled the cart with the plasma cutter on top over to the aganoid. He then set about the task of removing the top of the aganoid's head, while Cat danced around singing, "Yeeah, we're too fast for _you_, mister mean ugly robot dude! Too fast and too sexaaaay! Yeeeah!" Lister did his best to ignore him as he took a small laboratory spatula out of his jumpsuit and scraped the aganoid's electronic brains out of its head.

When they lay on the ground in a mushy pile, Lister stood, stomped on them a few times, and then stepped back with a sigh of relief. "Fine. Done here." He picked up Rimmer's light bee and looked at it. It was covered with fine engraving, the letters too small for Lister to read, and had a few buttons and switches on it. Cat started to bat at it playfully, but Lister stuck it in his coveralls. "Let's see what Holly says."

"She'll say it's a good goddam riddance," Cat muttered, slinking along behind Lister.

Aside from saying "smegging" instead of "goddam," Cat was quite correct. However, she ran her diagnostics on the bee when Lister hooked it up as he remembered Kryten doing.

"'E's intact. The safeties shut him down before anything could be damaged, near as I can tell."

"So what do I do, Hol?"

"Disconnect the bee, override the safety - that little recessed red thing, you'll need a pen - then turn it on. It's the little silver toggle. Toss it away when you do, or he'll reform with yer arm in his chest."

Finding a pen turned out to be a nontrivial matter, but Lister eventually hunted one down, and turned Rimmer back on as Holly had instructed. He took a deep breath as the hologram sprang back into being and straightened his already-straight iridescent red uniform. He prepared himself for smugness, pomposity, and complete denial of cowardice.

He stared at the ceiling in their quarters about an hour later, his throat very sore. He had surprised himself. No sooner had Rimmer opened his mouth than Lister had started to curse him to Hades and back, at the top of his lungs. He supposed it was not strange that he had finally snapped, however. He felt like years of frustration were in that rant, this Rimmer overlapping in his mind with the old one as he went over every slight and annoyance that he could remember, from the times Rimmer unstrung his guitar and threw the strings into space to the early-morning exercise sessions that were always earlier and louder when Lister had been drinking to the shoddy birthday presents that were worth less than the money Rimmer 'borrowed' to pick them up to the times Rimmer had started barfights and left Lister to finish them to the time he had put itching powder in Lister's ship-issue condoms when he had a date with Kochanski to Rimmer's eagerness to sell Lister out to the aganoid to...

It was, indeed, a good hour's worth of yelling, which is a long time to keep a stream of invective going without becoming repetitive. But Lister was well-practiced, and he was warmed to the subject. Rimmer did try to slip a word or two in edgewise, but Lister ran right over the top of them. Rimmer's face ran a fascinating gamut of emotions, starting with stunned disbelief, progressing through anger to red-eared fury, through resignation and annoyance, and finally ending up with a nearly blank expression that Lister had never seen before. It was that expression that finally made Lister trickle to a halt, and he turned and stormed out of the control room. Cat watched him go, his eyebrows almost stuck to his hairline.

Lister's fury took him to his quarters, then slowly drained out as he stared at the ceiling, panting.

It was almost completely gone when Rimmer walked in, his face still blank, and climbed onto his own bunk. Lister could not see him down there, which was a small mercy, but he could feel the uncomfortable presence of the other man. They each shifted quietly, not speaking.

Rimmer was the first to break the silence. "I thought it was rather nice, actually." His voice was petulant.

"What?" Lister scraped.

"The present. You hung it over your bunk." Rimmer paused. "Well, not _you_. You."

Lister looked at the posters over his bunk. They were quite similar to his posters back in his old quarters, although some of them referred to bands and athletes he had never heard of. The one that occupied the venerable position held by Jim Bexley Speed in his old universe was lauding an athlete named Eric Walker. He did not look like Jim, but his dark skin, broad shoulders, and toothy white smile was certainly reminiscent of Lister's beloved Jim.

Once again, Lister had to remind himself that this was a different person from the Rimmer he had known. Just as arrogant and insufferable, but... Lister put the brakes on that line of thought, bringing it to a screeching halt. He turned on his side, looking at the wall. Why did he have to be so like the old Rimmer, with the differences so subtle? Why couldn't he have been more like Ace?

"Yes, Ace," Rimmer said from below, acidly, and Lister realized that he had spoken aloud. "Where is _he_ these days?"

"Shu' it," Lister snapped. "He died to save the 'Bug. All of us."

"Yes, and a fat lot of good that did," Rimmer snapped. "You had to skitter out anyway, like jupirats off of a sinking starship, and lost him, Kryten, the 'Bug, and _me_. What a fantastically pointless gesture."

"He tried," Lister spat back. "He let us escape. It was _something_.""

"Yes, if we were all like that, we'd all be quite pointlessly dead."

"You don't understand," Lister growled.

"No, Listy, I don't. And I hope I never do."

Lister stared at the ceiling above, counting to a sufficiently high number. He pictured Rimmer below him doing the same, and he hoped that the exercise kept the hologram up much later.


	9. Celebration

Rimmer sat on his bunk, pointedly reading a book. He shifted now and then to enjoy the novelty of his silk pajamas sliding along his hard-light flesh. True, seen from a certain standpoint, they were not _actually_ his, but in the absence of a terribly vocal protest from the science officer whose quarters he had nicked them from, he was prepared to call them his anyway. It was fairly late - scratch that, the clock had turned over, and it was technically fairly early - and he was tired and beyond ready to sleep, but he stayed awake, stifling his yawns with the side of his hand. He did not want to be rudely awakened when Lister staggered back from the two-person bacchanal he was laughingly calling a twentieth birthday party.

Snatches of singing became audible, growing louder, and Rimmer set his mouth in a firm line. He thought about it for a moment, and assumed Blank And Condescending #6 - eyes narrowed, line of lips broken with a slight purse, two horizontal lines in the brow. It would be wasted if Lister were as drunk as Rimmer expected him to be, but Rimmer was a perfectionist when it came to provocation. The singing grew louder, and became recognizable as an obscene ditty about finding naked women in a variety of implausible places in the space of an otherwise normal day, and having bits of produce on hand just by happy chance. Lister and Cat had gotten as far as the icebox and a papaya, each in his own favorite key, by the time the door opened and Lister staggered in. He bellowed a drunken farewell at the Cat, then hit the door close button. The boy leaned against the door next to it for a moment, swinging a bottle in his fist and finishing the last verse, which involved an avocado in a way that just did not sound physically possible to Rimmer. He looked firmly at his book.

Lister weaved his way over to the bunk. "Rimmeh!" he bellowed. "Yeh din' come to my partay!"

Rimmer sighed, put his bookmark in his spot, closed the book, set it on the floor, and turned his condescending look on Lister. "Three things, Listy. Firstly, I am three paces from you, and can hear you even if you don't bellow like a cattle auctioneer. Secondly, I am well aware that I did not come to your party, because I was here. Thirdly, going to a birthday party of yours ranks on my priority list just below getting tongue-kissed by our old family dog, who ate cat turds and licked his own testicles."

Lister sat heavily down on the bunk next to Rimmer, and grinned at the hologram. Rimmer wrinkled his nose as breath that had a higher alcohol content than most domestic beer washed over him. "Eh, don' be such a prude," Lister said, and giggled. He held the bottle up. "Have a dhrink."

Rimmer pushed the bottle away. "Not a chance. Now, if you need help getting back into your bunk, I'm sure I can rig up a catapult..."

Lister frowned. "I want you... to have a drink," he said, his voice a little clearer. He pushed the bottle more firmly at Rimmer, and Rimmer pushed it away more firmly. Lister sighed and put the bottle beside the bed. He then leaned forward and grabbed Rimmer by the edges of his pajama top, yanking and falling backwards onto the floor. Rimmer, startled, found himself jerked forward and sprawling atop Lister. He tried to push away and stand, but Lister rolled over, pinning him to the ground with one leg on either side.

"Get _off_ of me, you damned presumptuous space-bum!" Rimmer yelped, pushing ineffectively at Lister's chest.

Lister swatted at Rimmer's hands with one hand, while with the other, he grabbed the bottle. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and spat it across the room, then leaned forward, pushing down on Rimmer's chest with one hand while he poured some of whatever was in the bottle over Rimmer's face. "I want you to have a drink!" he said, giggling.

Rimmer spat and sputtered, but some of the stuff made it down his throat anyway, and he started to cough. The stuff tasted like it was 3/4 alcohol and 1/4 drain cleaner. He hacked desperately, and Lister stopped pouring. "Y'all righ'?" he asked.

Rimmer regained control of his voice. "Of course I'm not all right, you..." he inhaled for a moment to let loose a string of insult to follow the 'you,' but Lister, with the cunning of the highly intoxicated, timed the next deluge from the bottle to coincide with that inhale. Quite a lot of the booze went down the wrong pipe, then made its way down the right one as Rimmer hacked. It was really quite potent stuff, and Rimmer put his head back for a moment as his brain started to do the backstroke. A warm tingling was spreading out from his stomach. _I guess a hologram_ can _get drunk_, he thought, and something about that thought made him giggle.

"I knew you'd... have a drink," Lister said, giggling along. He set the bottle carefully off to the side, after taking another swig from it himself.

The synchrony of Lister's giggle made Rimmer frown. "That... was the rudest... most incon... inconsiderate thing. Totally worthy of you, Listy." The alcohol had rubbed the edge off of his tongue, he noted with regret. Instead of fruitlessly trying to think of a really scathing insult, he jerked and pushed, trying to get out from under Lister. "Off of me, you jackarse!"

Lister grabbed his wrists as he flailed and rode him as he jerked. The boy stopped giggling, but did not stop smiling. As soon as Rimmer paused in his jerking, Lister leaned down and started to lick the alcohol off of Rimmer's face. "Waste..." he sighed into Rimmer's ear, then flicked his tongue out again to sloppily lap off what had spilled over Rimmer's ear and into the gap of his neck and shoulder. He started to rub a very noticeable erection against Rimmer's hip. Rimmer was torn between extreme annoyance at this and the unavoidable fact that he had one to match. As hideously embarrassing as the mere thought of The Event of just over three years ago was, the one that was capitalized in both of their minds and never referred to, it nonetheless still had its alluring qualities, ones that percolated into Rimmer's head as it was swimming from that hideous booze. He reached his mouth out and tried to capture that licking tongue.

It slipped away as Lister pulled it back into his mouth, rocked back, and stood, the look of delight starting to ebb from his face. Rimmer sat up, feeling very petulant, and said, "Look, miladdio!" He stood, saying, "If you're going to..." and got no farther, as the alcohol shot his balance to hell, and he staggered backwards. Lister grabbed his pajama top with one hand and his side with the other, and they staggered about for a few moments in an odd little waltz, each regaining his balance just in time to have it thrown off by the other. Lister finally made the decisive step of offbalancing them as they passed by the bunks, and they both tumbled unceremoniously into Rimmer's bunk, banging bits on the sharp edge. Rimmer rubbed his shin with a groan.

Lister rolled on his side and grasped Rimmer's face with both hands. "Yeh... want this?" he asked. Rimmer blinked as his eyes began to stream from that fierce wash of toxic breath. But Lister's face was hypnotizing. _Boy_, he had been careful to think of Lister as since The Event, and since then had condescendingly thought him as nothing more than the teenage bum he had appeared to be. But as the freakish adolescent hormones had released him from their grip, Lister's face had matured far more than three years could account for, and Rimmer's offensive comeback stuck in his throat as he saw almost a hundred and fifty years staring back at him from that young, almost cherubic face. He could only look on wordlessly as Lister leaned forward and pressed their lips together. Rimmer whimpered and put his hands on Lister's back, under his shirt, and stroked as Lister slid his tongue in, its prodding combining with the alcohol to make the room spin crazily. Rimmer grabbed Lister's back more tightly, tears leaking out as the intensity of three years of hopeless lust started to wash over him, and he closed his eyes and opened his mouth wider. Lister moaned into his mouth, raising his hands to the neck of Rimmer's pajamas and ripping down the seam at the back, and as much as Rimmer knew that he should be terribly annoyed at the ruin of the lovely pajamas he had _just_ found, all he could think to be annoyed about was the thought of who Lister might be thinking of - especially as it was almost assuredly Ace. It was not a helpful annoyance; it was not one that allowed Rimmer to maintain any kind of grip on himself as Lister slid the torn pajamas down his arms, kissing his cheek and then his chest as he pushed Rimmer down to lie back on the bunk.

Rimmer grabbed Lister's ears, almost choking on the longing he had not let himself feel since then, unavoidable with the man licking his way down Rimmer's stomach and tugging at his pajama bottoms. The man so like _his_ Lister; the same soft cheeks, the same curly, dark hair, the same warbly voice. Rimmer let go and grabbed the bunk with one hand and the blanket with the other as Lister shook his head, grumbling something about tugging his ears off. Lister looked up as he slid the pajama bottoms down and off, and Rimmer was hit once more with a century and a half buried in a pair of dark brown eyes. He forgot to breathe as Lister threw the bottoms carelessly off of the bunk. No, it was not _his_ Lister lying between his legs; no way in Jupiter's hurricane was this Lister with an impossibly old expression on his boy's face _his_ Lister. This other Lister sucked two fingers meaningfully, then jammed them up Rimmer's bum, working and twisting as Rimmer gasped and moaned. The Lister who was not his let more spittle fall out of his mouth, rubbing it over his cock before pushing it inside. Rimmer gasped, the pain too similar to the first time he had ever done this, the _fullness_ just as disconcerting. Rimmer grasped his cock with one unsteady hand and started to move, turning the pain into a bittersweet pleasure as this Lister pounded harder and faster than _his_ Lister had ever dared, staring at Rimmer intently with his mouth half-open, his hands grasping Rimmer's thighs.

Rimmer had always preferred to come with his eyes closed, riding the sensation, but he could not tear himself away from the intense stare of this too-old boy, and jerked like a fish on a line as come dribbled onto his stomach, his orgasm coming in spasms instead of waves as Lister continued to pummel and stare. Rimmer pulled every shred of orgasm out of himself, and Lister still continued to thrust almost desperately into his sore rear. Rimmer dropped his hand, drunkenness and exhaustion tugging at him even as Lister's pounding tugged him the other way. He was being torn in two, but Lister, this Lister who had seen so much more than Rimmer, was holding him together, until he took his hand off of Rimmer's thigh and ran it through the come on Rimmer's stomach, rubbing it up the hologram's chest. He put that sticky hand on Rimmer's cheek as he finally drove once, hard, then again, and once more, dropping his head as he groaned through his teeth. He dropped his hands to either side of Rimmer's chest as he let out a long, drawn-out moan, gasping in a few more breaths as he rode out his own orgasm. Once his breaths evened out, he leaned forward and licked the inside of Rimmer's mouth, which hung half-open, stupidly, and he pulled his cock out, the head catching slightly and making Rimmer whimper.

Lister collapsed on his side, panting. "Hap... burfay to me..." he sighed, and started to snore.

Rimmer let his head fall to the side, sighing at the breath that washed over him. He wished he had not gotten drunk - he'd have a hell of a hangover later. He wished he had enough energy to fetch his pajama bottoms, or generate his uniform - anything to give his current position even the vaguest semblance of dignity. He wished he could pretend the person lying next to him was _his_ Lister, a simpler man who respected, hell, _adored_ Rimmer, who Rimmer could easily sleep with without it actually _being_ anything. He wished the person lying next to him did not find it so easy to pretend he was someone else. Most of all, though, he wished that he did not want that man-boy lying next to him, the one who irritated him so effortlessly, the one he could not stand to be around and the one who he could not stand to have despise him as much as the man did. He wished the grotty, filthy, arrogant bastard did not evoke a feeling in him that was far too disturbingly close to what he had heard described as love.

His last thought, before falling into a troubled sleep, was that he had never gotten what he wished for in life, so why should that change in death?


	10. Hung

"Guhrrmmmnnngh..."

Lister stirred. He felt rather comfortable and relaxed; he could sleep for another hour or two.

"Uhurruhrrnngh..."

He could sleep for another hour or two if Rimmer would shut up. Lister grabbed the pillow and pulled it over his head. "Shaddup, Rimmer," he yelled at the wall. He felt the barest twinge of hangover, but it was barely even noticeable. He hadn't gotten terribly drunk, after all. Rimmer's pillow, Rimmer's bunk; it didn't come back in a rush, but had been nestled in his awareness since he had woken. He hadn't gotten terribly drunk, after all.

"Lister," Rimmer groaned, "you're breathing too loudly."

The smegger really _couldn't_ take his alcohol, could he? Lister had poured maybe a quarter of that bottle out, and maybe half of that had actually made it down Rimmer's throat. Lister had gone through a bottle of that himself, along with the swig from the last one and what he had licked off of Rimmer, and it had just been enough to get what Lister liked to think of as Nicely Drunk. Enough to toss all of the little inhibitions and neuroses that civilized life slap on you, enough to let the real him come out and have a night of unrestrained fun. Apparently, enough to have sex with Rimmer, as well.

He had been guilty of premeditation with that one, no doubt. His twentieth birthday - that was the one to get drunk and get laid on, for sure. Well, the first time around, that had been every birthday from puberty to the death of the human race, but he was a little more constrained by circumstance this time around. Lister lay in the bunk, listening to the groaning and wondering what the two of them would do, now. The mental image of him lying around on his bunk chatting and looking at the stars or watching It's A Wonderful Life with Rimmer, as he had with Kochanski, came to mind, and Lister snorted and spat out a giggle.

"_Lister!_" Rimmer cried in a weak, plaintive voice.

Well, _that_ question was answered. He would leave this nice comfy bunk so he would not have to listen to Rimmer have a hangover. Lister sighed and sat up, gaping his jaw in a yawn and stretching until his back popped. Rimmer sat at the table in the middle of their room, wearing his (now sadly wrinkled and wadded) silk pajama bottoms, his head pillowed on his (now sadly ripped and wadded) silk pajama top. His face was locked in a rather interesting meld of disgust and misery, and his hair stuck out frizzy spurts of curl. He looked at Lister with glassy eyes.

"I'll just leave yeh alone," Lister said, cracking his back as he stood. He picked up his boxers - he must have kicked them and his trousers off during the night - and stepped into them as he walked towards the door, fumbling into his boots once the boxers were high enough to stay put. Rimmer closed his eyes and moaned.

Lister ordered a simple breakfast from the nearest vend-o-mat. It stared silently back. Lister frowned and repeated his order more loudly.

"Oi," Holly said, popping into view on a nearby monitor. "Sorry 'bout that. The vend-o-mat's on holiday. I said I'd take over. Shouldn't have done it right after a party!" She did look the worse for wear, Lister thought; she had purple bags under her eyes, and her hair was up in soft pink rollers. "Too good, Dave, that party! I haven't gotten that jiggered since..."

"Holly, can I have me food?" Lister asked, petulantly. His stomach grumbled to emphasize the point.

"Oh, yeh, sorry. Here." The vend-o-mat blinked to life, and delivered his breakfast tray - correctly, for once. Holly still was good at one thing, at least. Lister put one hand under the tray as he walked to the control room, freeing the other to drop the small cup of espresso into the stein of lager, and to upend the curry paste over his oatmeal. He sat down in one of the control chairs and put his feet up on the console as he dug in with gusto.

Holly's head reappeared over the console. "You're lucky I'm on watch. You just pushed the self-destruct button with your boot."

Lister raised his eyebrow as he looked. His boot was sitting on an innocuous grey button. "That's the self-destruct?"

"Yep. Not the best design, I know, but nobody asked _me_, now, did they?" She blinked. "Whot's with Rimmer? I just tried to give him his wake-up, and he called me somethin' _very_ rude. Not in the least bit true, either. I've never even seen a badger in person."

"He's got a hangover," Lister replied, through a mouthful of spicy oatmeal.

"Oh, fer cryin'..." Holly sighed. "He doesn't know smeg about that drive, does he?" She disappeared.

Lister took a sip of caffeinated beer and chewed it into his mouthful of oatmeal. Thoughts were flicking around in his head, and with the distractions of Rimmer's moans and Holly's nannering gone, they were settling into the zone responsible for rumination. Events had not exactly followed premeditation. The thought had entered his mind, while he and Cat were playing pin-the-brassiere-on-the-president with Y-front blindfolds, that it might be fun to end the evening with something other than a drunken stupor, and The Event had come to mind. Enough time had passed since then that it had actually seemed like a good idea to get Rimmer a little drunk, do some tongue-kissing, stroke each other off, call it a night. He had been a little startled at how eager Rimmer had been, however - and yes, that was where things had gotten a bit out of hand. Heady kisses, ripped clothing, and then it had gotten completely out of hand, and into somewhere else.

Lister took a deep breath, draining the last of the beer, throwing his head back until the porcelain of the espresso cup slid down to bump his lips. It had felt _far_ too good - hot, almost maddeningly tight, dragging a mind-bogglingly good orgasm out of him. But the look on Rimmer's face - it had been hypnotizing, and he must have been staring, to remember it so clearly. He had never seen that man look anything other than snarky and mean, excepting that slack-jawed, idiotic look he had sported when he had first gotten that hard-light drive. But when Lister had been doing what Lister himself would not have taken lying down, so to speak, Rimmer had looked lost, sad, _needing_ - expressions Lister did not think the hologram's face capable of forming.

The black screen in front of him formed fascinating reflections as Lister moved his head slightly back and forth, and he did so, gently rattling the now-empty glass against his tray. He could not say how long he had been doing so, lost in thought, before the tap-tap of regulation Space Corps boots (and the man had never made it into the blasted Space Corps!) came up the corridor, pausing just behind Lister.

Rimmer straightened his spotless red uniform. His hair, too, was immaculately parted, beaten into submission with whatever holograms used in place of gel. "Having a good morning's layabout, you disgrace to the noble engineering of this command centre?" Rimmer asked, sniffing.

"Mornin', Rimmer," Lister said, scooping up a spoonful of cooling, congealed oatmeal. He popped it into his mouth and grinned at Rimmer, chewing with his mouth open. There was a certain delight in watching Rimmer's look of disgust, one that made the remainder of his breakfast just a little bit tastier.


	11. Git

**A/N: I just realized that I lost a chapter (Drunk) in the submission. I have added it.**

It had been three days since - well, The Event was already taken, so Rimmer supposed he would have to think of it as The Other Event, and Lister had not said a smegging word about it. They both acted as if it had not happened, sniping and insulting in a way that was, at least, less bitter than it had been back when this _other_ Lister had first come by to disrupt everything. To send them storming back towards the in-all-likelihood-no-longer-there Earth. To mock a superior officer. To get drunk and sing mind-bogglingly obscene songs for half the night. To sit around in boxer shorts and boots, eating breakfast (if one could dignify that slop with such a name) in the middle of the day. Yes, just as he had the morning after The Other Event.

Perhaps that was all there was to what they had done, after all. Just two people who would, in the normal course of things, never share two words, thrust together in a course that was as far from normal as was possible to imagine. Sniping and bickering was just a natural outcome to two people who shared so little forced to be so close - and, when they had been too long alone and hit some kind of breaking point, trying to find some kind of physical satisfaction was only natural, as well. Anything beyond that - well, that was just ludicrous. The malfunctions of a too-long-alone hologram - after all, Holly and Kryten hardly counted as company. Not that this new Lister and Cat were any kind of guarantors of sanity.

It took three days for Rimmer to talk himself into this mindset. On the fourth, Lister crawled into his bunk, late at night, as Rimmer was dozing off. No hesitation, no prelude; the man lay full-length on the bunk - given the narrowness of the bunks, he was pressed up against Rimmer - and ran one hand up and down Rimmer's side, feathering gentle kisses on the hologram's cheeks, saying things too quietly and breathily for Rimmer to hear them clearly, but they certainly sounded sweet. There was nothing frantic or desperately lustful about it, and Rimmer started to shake. They were gentle tremors at first, but as Lister ran his hand to the small of Rimmer's back and kissed the hologram gently on the lips, they turned into spasms. Lister pulled back slightly. "Oi," he said, the furrows in his brow appearing very deep in the dim night-time illumination, "what's wrong, man?"

Rimmer pulled away, pushing himself back against the wall. "Just stay on your own bunk, _miladdio_!" he snapped.

"I thought..." Lister started, sounding confused.

"Fine time to start, smeg-for-brains! Get your grotty self off of my bunk," Rimmer ground through his teeth.

"Righ'," Lister muttered. "Whatever." He slid out of Rimmer's bunk, then hopped up into his own. Rimmer waited until the sounds of Lister rearranging himself on the bunk had stopped, and the sounds of his snoring drifted down instead. Then Rimmer grabbed his pillow and buried his face in it, letting spasms wrack his body. He saw, as he had as soon as _this_ Lister had slid into his bunk and started to touch him, _his_ Lister. The Game headset on, grinning vacantly; giggling, sometimes, or sighing, or moaning. Walking nowhere, talking to nobody, tongue out to kiss what was only in his head. Growing thinner and thinner, wanting less and less to eat what Kryten tried to coax down his mouth. His cherubic cheeks becoming hollow, skin dry and pasty, bones showing through his clothes - until, one day, he simply stopped breathing, a delighted grin on his face.

For him, the Game; for this Lister, Ace. For all of those Listers, across so many dimensions, there was always something Better Than Life. Better than him.


	12. Chill

"Hey - smeghead's warm!"

With the instinct for preservative warmth that had made his ancestors curl up on television sets and behind the fans of desktop computers, Cat squeezed between the cave wall and Rimmer. He contorted his lithe body into a ball and started to purr.

"You intrusive git!" Rimmer snarled. "You smell like fish." He stood, letting Cat slide to the floor, and walked to another section of cave. He sat against the wall pointedly.

"Hey! This ain't a picnic for me, either, bud. My suave factor is down a few million from bein' that close to you. Now stay still!" Cat unfolded and trotted over to Rimmer's new position.

"Look, you brainless pussy..."

"Oi!" The hairy, white, very Yeti-ish guard stumbled into the cave and rapped on the bars of their cage with a paw-like hand. "Stop makin' so much noise. Yer spoilin' me nap. The Chief don't count too good, so he wouldn't really notice if I only brought in two prisoners tomorrow, savvy?" It glared at Rimmer with beady black eyes.

"Oh, yes, Mister Yeti, sir." Rimmer clasped his hands together and assumed an expression that Lister could only assume was meant to be ingratiating. "Apologies if my unintelligent companions disturbed your rest. I can assure you..."

"Yeh will siddown and shaddup, or I'll rip yeh apart with me fists," the guard snarled. "I'm sick of yer whiny voice." It turned and stomped out of the room.

"You heard him, typewriter-head!" the Cat said, grinning. "Shut up and stay still." He slid behind Rimmer's back again, purring, and Rimmer bit his lip and stared irately ahead.

Lister watched, nibbling on his lip. He had pointedly avoided contact with Rimmer since the night the weasely smegger had kicked him out of the bunk. With typical Rimmer timing, it had been just as Lister had started to think there might be something more than a smeghead there, after all. He had clambered back into his own bunk, fuming. _Ace_, he had thought. _Ace wouldn't've done that_. Even if Ace hadn't wanted Lister, he would have been decent and upfront about it all. But Ace was dead. And Lister had found that his dreams - at least, the ones that made him wake up with his sheets warm and sticky - featured Ace with decreasing frequency. Rimmer was more often in the starring role; his long, lean hands on Lister, or his long, lean, sarcastic mouth, silenced for a moment, at least. Lister was not too proud to admit that something had happened that was beyond immediate physical need. Too bad that the smeghead hadn't; he had swaggered airily through the day with his large nose in the air, never meeting Lister's eyes, pretending they had never so much as touched, let alone... smeg it all. Lister had promised himself he would just stay away from the bastard.

But Lister was cold enough to partake of any warmth that was in the offering, and if _Cat_ were willing to snuggle with Rimmer to stay warm - well, that made Lister's distance excessive grudge-holding.

To be fair, the predicament they were in was Lister's fault, after all. Sort of. In a way.

He had just wanted a sledding holiday.

It had been yet another routine day in space, chewing up the vast distance between themselves and Earth like a microbe digging into an extra-large deep-dish pizza. Lister was in the room he and Rimmer shared; Rimmer, as was frequently the case since the last time they had made love (not a good term at all, but 'fucked' was too uncaring and 'sex' too clinical), was not. Holly had popped her head in to laconically announce their proximity to a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Lister had dropped his dirty magazine and run through the corridors to the control room. Rimmer and Kryten were already there, the former flaring his nostrils in annoyance at Lister's breathless entry. Cat had swaggered in after Lister, wearing a maroon velvet suit and a dazzling smile. "You all need to be sittin' down to see this one," he had announced, holding his lapels out in two elegantly manicured hands.

"What's with the planet, Krytes?" Lister had asked. Oh, he had been so ready for planet leave. If it had been a planet of bubbling acid lakes, he would have gone down with a towel and a swimsuit. He was sick and bloody tired of Cat's vanity, Kryten's fussiness, and Rimmer's general anal-retentive, officious, pompous smeg-headedness. Not to mention his refuse-to-shag-ness. Lister had read every porno mag he could find on the ship twice, and he was getting bored even with _that_. He needed out.

"It's very Earthlike," Kryten reported, reading what Holly flashed up on the screen. "However, the sun is cooler than Sol. It's a winter planet, entirely snow-bound, except for a band of freezing rain at the equator. The poles are too cold for human habitation."

Lister had felt stirrings of excitement. _Snow_. When was the last time he had felt honest-to-smeg snow? Real stuff, not like the toxic crap on that moon he had been marooned on; real snow, the kind that was all water, the kind that you could catch on your tongue and eat? The kind you could sled on and make snowballs and snowmen and snow forts out of? He had jumped up and slapped Cat on the shoulder. "Hey, Cat, let's grab a 'Bug and head on down." Cat had pulled a fabric brush out of his pocket and smoothed the nap that Lister had ruffled.

Rimmer had snorted and objected. Of course he had. "Are we really going to trust the judgment of a man with more JMC lager on his breath than is present in the ship's manifest? A man whose judgment is unreliable even when he's sober? I say we pass."

Nothing could have made Cat and Kryten more eager to land on the planet than Rimmer's objection, and so they immediately started packing. Rimmer had stood in the middle of their quarters, prophesying death, doom, and a lack of proper toilet facilities as Lister had thrown warm clothes into a bag.

"If yeh don't want to come," Lister remembered saying, as he slung his bag over his shoulder, "stay here. Hol will keep ya company."

"JMC regulations specify at least one adult on every extravehicular lander mission," Rimmer had muttered. "If I go along, there will be a grand total of, oh, _one_." Rimmer had, for the first time in far too long, actually met Lister's eyes, and the sad resignation there had belied his snippy tone.

But that had disappeared so quickly that Lister was not sure if he had just imagined it. Rimmer had snipped as they had boarded Starbug, had sneered at Cat's outfit, had critiqued Holly's course and landing, and groaned in disgust at the rolling, snowy hills nearby.

_Screw him up the arse with a pineapple_, Lister had thought. He had grabbed a scarf, mittens, and a section of Pyrex radiation insulation, and run out into the snow. He could not remember the last time he had experienced such genuine, unreserved _fun_. He had run to the top of the first hill he reached, flung himself on the insulation, and sledded down it. When he tired of sledding after a few hours of it, he made snowballs and pitched them at Rimmer. When he tired of annoying Rimmer, he built a snowman and nicked Kryten's earmuffs for it. The mechanoid had complained of chills in his circuits, and retired to Starbug to warm up. Lister had ranged farther and farther afield, frolicking with Cat, being pursued by Rimmer's relentless negativity.

Then the GELFs had appeared.

Lister had practically sledded down one. Their inbred camouflage was perfect for the snowy landscape. It had picked him up by the collar with one huge paw, staring him in the face with small black eyes under an overhanging, hairy white brow. More had risen from their hiding places to surround Rimmer and Cat.

"Normals," one had growled. "It has been long since we have seen them; long since we have feasted on their flesh!"

"Trust me," Rimmer had said, fawningly, "we are anything but normal. And we taste hideous. Really. Just smell that one and see!" He pointed at Lister.

"Shaddup," shrieked another one, with an oddly Cockney accent. "We're takin' yeh to the Big Boss!"

The Big Boss had turned out to be an old GELF, his white fur streaked with grey, who was sitting on a throne-like chair that stood, for no reason that Lister could see, out in the middle of a snow-covered clearing.

"Oh, great and mighty GELF leader!" the first GELF had cried.

The great and mighty GELF leader had snorted and mumbled, shifting in his throne.

"Erm. We have prisoners, your Really Impressiveness!" the GELF had continued, doggedly. The impressive leader started to snore.

After a hasty conference, the Cockney GELF had carried the three prisoners bodily to a cavern in the side of one of the hills. Lister had struggled, but the GELF had a grip of iron.

He had tossed them in a cell in the cave, then loped out and left them to stew. Or, more accurately, freeze. The sun had sucked far too much warmth out of the sky as it went down, the last rays throwing ruddy streaks through the cave's mouth before they faded to nothing. Lister and Cat had started to shiver. At first it had been the regular shivers of cold, as they whispered together, Lister trying to think of possible escape plans, Cat and Rimmer trying to insult each other. Then the cold had become worse, and regular shivers gave way to violent, wracking, uncontrollable spasms. Rational thought had begun to elude Lister, slipping out of his mind like a deft minnow. _That isn't good_, part of him said, but the rest of him asked just what the smeg he could possibly do about it?

Well, Lister thought as he watched Cat purr contentedly, tucked between an irate hologram's back and the cave wall, Cat certainly seemed to have found something to do about it.

Smeg it all. Lister scurried across the floor and pushed up against Rimmer's knees, which the hologram was holding to his chest. Lister had never been so close to Rimmer in such a cold - indeed! - and calculated fashion; without lust fogging his brain, he noted things that he had missed before. The experience was odd. Interesting, but odd. Rimmer was, indeed, warm - warm, and slightly staticky, like a TV screen. It made one of Lister's fillings ache, the one that he had gotten on Callisto from a back-alley dentist. It was so different from being close to a human, and smeg it all, Rimmer was _warm_! Lister shoved Rimmer's legs aside and pushed himself close to the hologram's chest.

"Lister," Rimmer sighed, quietly, looking warily towards the cave entrance.

"Mmm-hmm," Lister agreed. He was warm! The chill air was becoming a happy memory as he curled up, sticking his hands into Rimmer's armpits and tucking his face into the underside of Rimmer's chin. The hologram swallowed, nervously, and Lister smiled at the sensation. _Warm_. Rimmer had no heartbeat, but had an oddly lulling buzz, just barely at the level of audibility.

"I was always cold when I was soft-light," Rimmer muttered.

"Yer warm now," Lister replied. He shifted, trying to bring as much of his body into contact with Rimmer as possible. Interesting, he thought, that Rimmer's clothes were just as warm as his neck. Then again - he was all one projection, wasn't he? His clothes were just as much a part of him as his skin was. Oh, yes, skin. Lister was rapidly forgetting that he was annoyed at Rimmer. He pushed his lips against Rimmer's neck, tasting the soft electricity of it. Smeg, it was exciting. "Me back's cold," he murmured.

Rimmer moved his hands hesitantly, tentatively, to Lister's back, bringing that delicious warmth to that side of Lister, as well. Lister licked the side of Rimmer's neck, and Rimmer shivered. "Dave..." he sighed.

"Stop movin', smeghead!" Cat hissed.

Rimmer opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap, looking warily at the cave entrance. He leaned back against Cat, staring at the ceiling with resignation. Lister relaxed. He was horny, yes - but he was also warm and content, with that peaceful lassitude that would come, millions of years ago and back on Earth, with a warm bed and a cup of tea after an afternoon playing in the snow and becoming thoroughly chilled. He closed his eyes and drifted off, lulled by the low hum of Rimmer's projection.


	13. Heat

"Geddup!"

Lister jerked awake at the shout. He looked about him, disoriented. Not Red Dwarf. Not Starbug. No, it was... memories flooded back all too quickly. Yes. The winter planet with the Yeti - one of whom was whacking the bars of their cell with a paw-like hand. Lister fell to the floor from his half-reclined position as Rimmer leapt to his feet. Cat tumbled from his niche between Rimmer's former position and the rock wall, falling on top of Lister. The two of them struggled to sort themselves out as Rimmer proceeded to walk over and try to ingratiate himself with the guard.

The guard opened the door and picked Rimmer up by the collar in one hand, stifling his speech before he had gotten one nasal "Mister Yeti, sir," out of his mouth. With his other paw, he grabbed Lister's jacket and Cat's scarf, hauling them all out of the cave.

"Ouch! Dude! Mind the scarf - that's silk!" Cat yowled.

"Cat," Lister groaned, stumbling along with the insistent tug, feeling the guard's sharp, talon-like nail prod at his throat, "shut up about your smegging scarf, wouldja?" He struggled, but the point prodded more insistently the harder he struggled. Lister let himself be dragged, fuming.

The guard dropped them on the snow in front of the Esteemed Leader's throne. Lister noted that the Esteemed Leader looked a little more rested and coherent than he had the last time they had been brought before him (or was it her? it? Lister hated to presume). A second guard stood there; Lister guessed that it must be the other one, the one with the excessively precise punctuation. That guard watched with distaste as the first guard stepped back, rubbing his nose with his paw, and yelled, "'Ere yeh go!"

"Oh, Exalted Leader," the second guard intoned, turning towards the old Yeti and spreading his hands in a reverent gesture, "now that you have had your Royal Nap, we bring you these tasty morsels of humanity. It is your right, Your Eminence, as our most respected and honored leader, to take the first mouthful of their juicy flesh..."

"Yes, yes, I know," the Exalted Leader yipped in a weak, quavering voice (although it settled the Exalted Leader as a 'he' in Lister's mind). "Bring me..." he paused, looking at the trio, then pointed one quavering paw at Rimmer. "That one."

The second guard grabbed Rimmer by his bright red tunic. Rimmer immediately began to babble. "Oh, er, wait! You're a lovely slavering monster, I'm sure, but no doing on the whole eating thing... nobody samples my juicy flesh on the first night out..."

"Oi!" Lister yelled, jumping to his feet. He was not sure exactly what he was going to do, but one thing was sure - he was not about to let some Yeti-GELF eat Rimmer alive! He sprang forward - and suddenly found himself lying on his back and staring up at the grey sky, his shoulder aching. He realized that the first guard must have knocked him down - and done it with a speed and agility that Lister would have found impressive in a London Jet, but found highly worrisome in a beast holding them captive. He sat up, slowly, with a moan.

Rimmer, his babbling almost completely incoherent as his terror increased, was being sniffed by the Exalted Leader. The Leader, apparently satisfied with Rimmer's scent, took a large bite out of Rimmer's arm. Rimmer shrieked, and Lister had to shiver at the sight of a scalloped hole, complete with jagged tooth-marks, in Rimmer's arm. Blood flowed from it, but disappeared in a red glow as it dripped off of his arm.

The Exalted Leader chewed contemplatively. He paused, and an expression of absolute disgust crossed his face. He spat out half-chewed arm with noisy _pa-tooie_ sounds; the bloody chunks, like Rimmer's blood, fizzled out with a red glow. At least, Lister presumed they did. They were fairly red to start with. Lister's stomach did flip-flops.

The leader tossed Rimmer back onto the snow, where the hologram proceeded to fold up around his arm, whimpering. Cat backed away. "Don't get any bloodstains on my suit, stencil-head," he hissed.

Lister scrabbled over to Rimmer, worry tugging at him. "Yeh OK?" he asked, touching the hologram's back. Once again, he realized, he had forgotten to be annoyed at Rimmer. It was hard to keep annoyed at someone who had just been rather messily bitten, however, Apparently, Lister considered, hard-light _could_ be damaged - and a mental image flashed back to him, of glass shards embedded in a hard-light palm, of hard-light blood on his cheek, and then on his... he shivered.

"Yes, I got my smegging arm bitten off! I'm just smegging lovely!" Rimmer replied, still contorted, in a voice about a half-octave higher than normal.

Lister snapped his head back to face the Exalted Leader as said leader spoke in his high, reedy voice. "They do not have the luscious taste of humans! They are unworthy of consumption!"

The first guard took Lister and Cat by the collars, hauling them to their feet. The second took Rimmer by one red boot. Rimmer yelped as he was yanked into the air upside-down. "They are unclean, Your Utterly Impressive Greatness!" the second guard agreed, shaking Rimmer for emphasis.

"Eh!" Lister yelled. "Who're ya callin'..." He stopped talking as the guard let go for a moment to cuff him firmly, then took hold of his collar again.

His Really Impressive Greatness leaned forward. "They are worthy only of exile." He leaned back, sighing, and rested his head on the back of his chair. "I never get _anything_ good to eat anymore," he sighed, querulously. He scratched his rear with one paw, then settled back again, closing his eyes and beginning a wheezy snore.

The second guard turned to Lister and Cat, pulling Rimmer up to put him at the same level as the other two. "Hear your sentence!" the guard intoned. "You will be exiled! You will be sent to the Hell Planet, where only the vilest criminals of our race have been sent before. A place of searing heat. A hellhole with a violent, flaming sun. A place of boiling lakes that sear the skin from the bones, leaving the bones to die in writhing agony. A place..."

"Eh, mate," the first guard sighed, "I think they got the idea, whot? Let's toss 'em in the shu'le and get 'em the 'ell out, yeah?"

The first guard flashed his beady black eyes up at the grey sky. "Uneducated peasant," he snarled, turning on his heel and walking, carrying a still-whimpering Rimmer by one boot.

"Yesh, we're all really impressed with yer high-class bastard goddam talkin'," the first guard snarled, falling in behind the second one. Lister jerked and tried to slip out of his jacket, but the guard merely changed his grip to around Lister's neck. Lister had been caught in metal fences with less give, and he struggled uselessly, swearing and kicking, as the guard dragged him and Cat across the snow.

They eventually came to a brownish-grey lander, an angular, featureless number that looked like a space shuttle Lister had once made out of Legos. Unlike that shuttle, however, the one the Yeti guards dragged them to had scorch marks from re-entry all over the flattened nose. It was also large enough to let them in via a sliding door in the side. The interior looked a bit small for more than one of the Yeti-like guards, and the one holding Rimmer went in first. The one holding Lister and Cat watched placidly as Lister kicked at him and Cat scratched at him. "Yer a funny bunch," he said, his slit of a mouth turning up into a disturbing grin. "Too bad yeh taste so bad. I like to play with me food."

The other guard stomped out of the lander, and Lister found himself dragged inside. It was dim after the glaring brightness of sun on snow, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted. Rimmer was strapped to a chair, sucking at his arm and glaring at Lister, the guard, Cat, the lander, and pretty much everything else in his field of vision. Cat was rapidly and efficiently strapped into another chair, and Lister was strapped in between them. The Yeti checked the straps, then turned and left, the door sliding closed behind him. Lister started to tear and tug at the straps, but the mechanism holding them in place was smooth, offering no means he could discover to release them. The straps themselves were tough, and he tore at them with no effect beyond cutting his fingers on the edges.

"Would you stop that?" Rimmer moaned, still sucking at his arm as the door of the lander slid shut.

"I'm just tryin' to get us outta here!" Lister said, frustrated. Rimmer's voice, however, brought the hologram's injury to the front of Lister's mind. Rimmer was still conscious? Lister turned his head and snaked his arm over to take Rimmer's arm by the wrist. "Oh eh, how's that doin'?"

Rimmer shivered as Lister took his arm. "It hurts like a smegger!" Rimmer moaned. But as Lister looked at it, it seemed like the chunk bitten out was smaller than it had been initially, and the edges smoother. He raised his eyes at Rimmer. "It does seem to be healing," Rimmer muttered, recoiling as Lister prodded the wound.

The lander shuddered as its engines started, then jerked as it took off. Lister grabbed Rimmer's hand and squeezed it, feeling oddly protective. That evoked a yelp from Rimmer. Lister sighed. Kind gestures were wasted on Rimmer. He turned to Cat. "Hey, Cat, can you chew your way through these?"

Cat looked down at the straps with disgust. "Buddy, I can barely cope with the idea of these things being _on_ me! And you want me to _put them in my mouth_?"

"Look," Lister barked, "do yeh want to have yer skin seared off by boilin' lakes? Chew the buggers off!"

Cat groaned. "Aw, man, I can _not_ believe I'm..." He trailed off and bent down to take a strap in his mouth, heaving a weighty sigh. He bit at the strap, gingerly, then frowned. He bit it firmly. He pulled back, hissed, and started to chew and rip at it. He stopped after a minute of struggling with it, spitting and looking utterly disgusted. "It's too tough to chew through. And it tastes like those twits smell!"

"We're doomed," Rimmer moaned.

"No, we're not!" Lister struggled, trying to slip out of the straps. They were fastened _very_ tightly. A thought struck him. "Oi, they hadn't found Kryten. He must still be on the 'Bug. Maybe he knows where we are! Maybe he's trackin' us in Starbug right now!"

Cat perked up. "Hey, yeah, geodesic-head!"

"Oh, fantastic thought, Listy," Rimmer muttered. "Kryten will find us. And then he'll what? Snag us with the tractor beams Starbug doesn't have? Grab the lander with the grapple Starbug doesn't have? Disable the lander with the laser cannons Starbug doesn't have?"

"He could contact Holly..." Lister said, weakly.

"Red Dwarf would never get here in time."

Damned pessimistic smegger. Unfortunately, damned _correct_ smegger. Lister thought furiously, but no grand plans came to mind. He struggled against his straps with a sudden burst of maniacal strength, but the straps doggedly stayed in place. "Smeg!" he barked, frustrated.

Rimmer sighed, leaning against the straps. Lister noted that his arm was almost fully healed, clean pale flesh showing through ripped iridescent red uniform. Not that it would matter soon, he thought darkly. "For whatever it's worth," Rimmer muttered, "I'm sorry. It wasn't you. It was me."

Was this some kind of apology for the way Rimmer had kicked him out of bed? A fine smegging time to bring it up! "Yeh couldn't've brought that up at a more convenient time, couldja? Like when we're not about to be dropped on a killer hellhole planet?"

"I said I'm sorry," Rimmer muttered. Lister turned his head, then sucked in a startled breath. Rimmer did not look sarcastic or mean. He looked - smeg, he looked so sad and _needing_, the way he had looked when Lister had put his... Lister swallowed.

"I'm sorry, too, man," he muttered. "Wish we could hash this out in better circumstances. Be nice, tha'."

Rimmer closed his eyes. "I... care about you, you know."

Cat sighed noisily. Lister looked over to that side; Cat was watching him with a disgusted expression on his face. "Could you two knock it off? I don't want to die nauseated."

The lander started to jerk back and forth as it hit atmosphere. Lister took a deep breath. Part of him fumed that he was too young to die. Another part sniggered that he was well over a hundred years old, while the first part insisted that he was nonetheless too young to die. Quite a lot of himself, he realized, wanted to slap Rimmer, make the hologram explain himself, and then have a great deal of sex; enough to make up for the months they hadn't touched. However, he thought with resignation, it was a little late for _that_. He prepared himself mentally to be boiled alive.


	14. Almost Right

Reentry made the shuttle shake and rattle like the bed in the motor lodge that Lister and his mate Denny once rented in order to get away from their guardians and smoke marijuana. Lister and Denny had scrounged up enough money to plop into the slot in the headboard that made the mattress bounce; they had horsed around on it pretending to be shuttle pilots until the bottom fell out of the bed. Lister closed his eyes and tried to remember that time, over a hundred years ago - well, in actuality, over three million years ago. Maybe he should have actually studied to be a shuttle pilot, instead of resolving to be a rock guitarist. If he had, he sure as smeg wouldn't have ended up in a rickety lander taking to him to his death in an inferno of a planet, trapped between a narcissistic feline and a neurotic hologram who was asking for his mother with a note of panic in his voice.

As if to complete the resemblance to that three-million-plus-years-gone bed, the bottom of the shuttle dropped out.

The chairs remained affixed to the bottom, which swung out on hinges, while the straps remained attached to the sides of the shuttle. As a result, the three less-than-intrepid adventurers dropped like three ungainly stones, flying to the ground.

Lister hit something abrasive with his forearm and went tumbling. He leaps to his feet, screeching, dancing to try to minimize the contact of his feet with the searing surface of the planet. He danced about loudly for a few minutes, then slowed as he realized that he was not actually being boiled alive.

Rimmer was staring at him; the hologram had his fingers in his ears, and his mouth was moving. Lister stopped yelling, and the mouth movements sync-ed up with the hologram's voice. "...shut the smeg _up_ already!"

Lister looked around. He stood on an expanse of warm bronze sand that stretched to the horizon, where it met a dark blue sky that was streaked with cotton trails of pale clouds. Lister turned, and saw that behind him the sand fetched up against a cobalt lake just a few feet away. A huge orange sun dangled low over the lake, and gentle waves broke against the beach. The words 'beautiful' and 'serene' took a good look at the scene, and then ran off in search of a more adequate companion. Lister stared, openmouthed. Even Cat was speechless.

Rimmer finally cleared his throat. "I suppose that this is a winter-GELF's idea of a boiling hellhole..."

"Trust me," Cat interrupted, "if you're here, it's a hellhole. Besides, look at all of that water! Ugh." He wrinkled his nose, backing up slightly.

Lister took a deep breath. "So, I suppose we just wait here for Krytes..." A grin split his face, and he tore at his clothes, running down towards the water. He felt filthy, and the water looked far too inviting. He wanted _out_ of his smeggy jumpsuit. "After a swim!"

------

Rimmer was not pleased.

It was a common state for him to be in. He could not remember the last time he had been truly pleased. That time that his mum had sent him those gold-filled cufflinks (before he found out that they had actually been for Howard and had been mis-posted) had been close, but he felt that he could say for certain that he had not been truly pleased since his death. His displeasure was particularly acute at this moment, however. He did not like lakes, and liked the sand that got into his boots and his briefs, itching severely, only in contrast to that substantial dislike of large deep bodies of water.

But he had to be there, he told himself. Lister was swimming - he had convinced Holly to stay near that planet for a bit before moving on, despite Rimmer's (very sensible, if he did say so himself) warnings about GELFs and Simulants and Aganoids and jellyfish and sunburn. The man was simply too immature to look after himself, Rimmer groused internally, and so the hologram was there to provide a responsible presence. Rimmer saw a small red crab scuttling towards him and jumped out of the way with a yelp, dancing away from the creature.

A loud splashing noise made Rimmer jerk his head back towards the lake. Lister was running out of the water, laughing and shaking himself. He trotted up to Rimmer, wringing streams of liquid out of his plaits. "Too bad yeh can't swim, man."

Rimmer wrinkled his nose. "I don't like water, and I don't see the point in splashing around in it like some ruddy goldfish." Lister even gaped like a goldfish, Rimmer noted.

Lister shrugged and stretched. "'Cause it's fun. Don't yeh do that? Fun, I mean?"

"All of the time. But unlike _you_, I take my fun from mature and responsible pursuits." Rimmer treated Lister to a grin that would not have looked out-of-place on a jackal.

"Mature and responsible, eh?" Lister asked, speaking slowly, as if he were tasting the words. "I dunno nothin' about that." He cocked his head, studying Rimmer, and suddenly grinned again. He reached out and unsnapped the fastenings on Rimmer's tunic. "Is this mature and responsible?"

Rimmer grabbed for his tunic, hurriedly snapping it back into place. "No, it is _not_! I..." He choked on the rest of the words as Lister grabbed him in a low tackle.

"Is this," Lister asked, through breathless laughter, "mature and respon_hic_ble?" He tore at Rimmer's tunic again as they rolled around in the sand, the hologram ineffectively trying to keep his clothes _on_.

"No!" Rimmer yelped, thinking regretfully about all of the other places that sand was likely to get in the name of what seemed to be on Lister's mind. He gave up with bad grace as he realized that the same activity, while perhaps not on his mind, certainly seemed to be on other parts of his anatomy.

------

'Beautiful' and 'serene' returned in the company of 'magnificent' and 'spectacular,' who they had just picked up at a bar and convinced to come to the scene. The four looked at the ruddy sun that sat half-set over the water, reflected in the shimmering surface along with rosy streaks of cloud. They ran off to find a bit more help.

Rimmer stared at the sunset, struggling with something strange inside of himself. He fiddled around with it, prodded it, held it up to the light, and finally realized what it was. It was that he felt, all in all, rather pleased. He shifted. Yes, despite the sand that was working its way into his slightly tender buttock crevice, he was _pleased_. It was a distinctly odd sensation. "Not bad," he said, wincing at how hideously inadequate that phrase was.

Lister's giggle was felt as much as heard, as his head sat atop Rimmer's chest. "Yeah, it's pretty. Holly said that the air has trace contaminants. They're fatal to people after a week or so of exposure, she said, but they sure make for a nice sunset, don' they?"

Rimmer looked at the sunset. "You're just going to keep trying to find a planet like Earth, aren't you?"

Lister nodded. "Yeah. I want to find a planet to settle down on, man. Even if there isn't Fiji anymore, there's still gotta be some pretty continent on some planet somewhere, what?"

Even Rimmer could spot the flaw. "And if you can't find such a planet, with a pretty little Fiji-like continent?"

Lister sounded unfazed. "I'll just keep lookin' and have as much fun as I can."

It was one of the most gerbily things Rimmer had ever heard Lister say, and he had heard a lot. "Is that all there is?"

"Well, what more do yeh want?" Lister twisted himself to look up at Rimmer. "Wanna be an officer? We can make you officer of summit onboard."

"Don't patronize me," Rimmer snapped.

"Why not? It's fun." Lister giggled again, then settled back against Rimmer's chest. He was a warm, soft weight, and felt, Rimmer had to admit, rather nice.

The hologram looked out at the stunning toxic sunset, and wondered if those trace contaminants were harmful to a light bee.


End file.
